Daniel Quinn Quotes

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

The premise of the Taker story is the world belongs to man.... The premise of the Leaver story is man belongs to the world.

In order to make their story come true, the Takers have to put an end to creation itself—and they’re doing a damned good job of it.

Adam wasn’t the progenitor of our race, he was the progenitor of our culture.

Whenever a Taker couple talk about how wonderful it would be to have a big family, they're reenacting the scene beside the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They're saying to themselves, 'Of course it's our right to apportion life on this planet as we please. Why stop at four kids or six? We can have fifteen if we like. All we have to do is plow under another few hundred acres of rain forest—and who cares if a dozen other species disappear as a result?'

Mankind was not needed to bring order to the world.

The world was not made for any one species.

Obviously Mother Culture must be finished off if you’re going to survive, and that’s something the people of your culture can do. She has no existence outside your minds. Once you stop listening to her, she ceases to exist.

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

You must face the fact that increasing food production doesn’t feed your hungry, it only fuels your population explosion.

This is precisely how someone speaks who imagines that he is the world’s divinely appointed ruler.

Within your culture as a whole, there is in fact no significant thrust toward global population control. The point to see is that there never will be such a thrust so long as you’re enacting a story that says the gods made the world for man. For as long as you enact that story, Mother Culture will demand increased food production today—and promise population control tomorrow.

Increasing food production to feed an increased population results in yet another increase in population. Obviously it has to have this result, and to predict any other is simply to indulge in biological and mathematical fantasies.

'Intensification of production to feed an increased population leads to a still greater increase in population.' Peter Farb said it in Humankind.
"You said it was a paradox?"
"No, he said it was a paradox."
"Why?"
Ishmael shrugged. "I'm sure he knows that any species in the wild will invariably expand to the extent that its food supply expands. But, as you know, Mother Culture teaches that such laws do not apply to man."

Once you exempt yourself from the law of limited competition, everything in the world except your food and the food of your food becomes an enemy to be exterminated.