Daniel Quinn

People seldom look very hard for things they don’t want to find.

It means I’ve been changed, fundamentally and permanently. It means I cannot be put back to what I was.

That’s why I am B: I cannot be put back to what I was.

Without a standing army, a king is just a windbag in fancy clothes.

No two journeys are ever alike, because no two pupils are ever alike.

What works, evidently, is cultural diversity. This should not come as a surprise. If culture is viewed as a biological phenomenon, then we should expect to see diversity favored over uniformity. A thousand designs—one for every locale and situation—always works better than one design for all locals and situations. Birds are more likely to survive in ten thousand nest patterns than in one. Mammals are more likely to survive in ten thousand social patterns that in one. And humans are more likely to survive in ten thousand cultures than in one—as we are in the process of proving right now. We’re in the process of making the world unlivable for ourselves—precisely because everyone is being forced to live a single way. There would be no problem if only one person in ten thousand lived the way we live. The problem appears only as we approach the point where only one person in ten thousand is permitted to live any other way than the way we live. In a world of ten thousand cultures, one culture can be completely mad and destructive, and little harm will be done. In a world of one culture—and that one culture completely mad and destructive—catastrophe is inevitable.

Crimes are what the state defines as crimes.

The world must live, the world must live! We are only one species among billions. The gods don’t love us more than they love spiders or bears or whales or water lilies.

Six billion of you wake up every morning and start devouring the world.

No story is devoid of meaning, if you know how to look for it. This is as true of nursery rhymes and daydreams as it is of novels and epic poems.

Of course, there is no one right way for people to live, any more than there is one right way for birds to build nests or for spiders to spin webs.

Of course it’s not enough. But if you begin anywhere else, there’s no hope at all.

If the will is there, the method will be found.