# Quote — Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words

> Jeanette [Armstrong, "a traditional Okanagan Indian"] said, 'Attitudes about the species communication are the primary difference between western and indigenous philosophies. Even the most progressive western philosophers still generally believe that listening to the land is a metaphor.' She paused, then continued emphatically, 'It's not a metaphor. It's how the world is.'

- Author: [Derrick Jensen](https://www.leafyquotes.com/derrick-jensen.md)
- Book: [A Language Older Than Words](https://www.leafyquotes.com/derrick-jensen/a-language-older-than-words.md)
- Page: 24
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Derrick_Jensen#A_Language_Older_Than_Words_(2000)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/derrick-jensen/a-language-older-than-words/jeanette-armstrong-a-traditional

## More from this book

> In order for us to maintain our way of living, we must, in a broad sense, tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves. It is not necessary that the lies be particularly believable. The lies act as barriers to truth. These barriers to truth are necessary because without them many deplorable acts would become impossibilities.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/derrick-jensen/a-language-older-than-words/in-order-for.md)

> There can be no real peace when living with someone who has already declared war, no peace but capitulation. And even that, as we see around us, doesn't lead to further peace but to further degradation and exploitation. We're responsible for not only what we do but for what is in our power to stop. Before we can speak of peace, we have to speak honestly of stopping, by any and all means possible, those who have declared war on the world and on us. Those who destroy wont stop because we ask nicely. There is only one language that they understand, and everyone here knows what it is. Yet we don't speak of it openly.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/derrick-jensen/a-language-older-than-words/there-can-be-no-real.md)

> Turning away from the computer I saw through my own narrow window (at least it opened) the green, the blue, the flashes. I looked to the clock, the screen, the window. An hour passed, then two. I looked again at the clock and saw it had been only twenty minutes. I willed the second-hand, the minute-hand, the hour-hand to move faster, to deliver me to five o'clock when I would be released as from my prison term. Then suddenly I stopped, struck by the absurdity of wishing away the only thing I've got. Eight hours, eighty years, it was all too similar. Would I wish away the years until the day of my retirement, until my time was once again my own? At work I tried to keep busy to make the hours pass quickly. It was no different when watching television, socializing, moving frenetically--there are so many ways to kill time.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/derrick-jensen/a-language-older-than-words/turning-away-from.md)