Quotes from Daniel Quinn

I think what you're groping for is that people need more than to be scolded, more than to be made to feel stupid and guilty. They need more than a vision of doom. They need a vision of the world and of themselves that inspires them.

The evolution of society is substantially a process of mental adaptation on the part of individuals under the stress of circumstances which will no longer tolerate habits of thought formed under and conforming to a different set of circumstances in the past.

Thinkers aren't limited by what they know, because they can always increase what they know. Rather they're limited by what puzzles them, because there's no way to become curious about something that doesn't puzzle you. If a thing falls outside the range of people's curiosity, then they simply cannot make inquiries about it. It constitutes a blind spot - a spot of blindness that you can't even know is there unit someone draws your attention to it.

a lifestyle for creatures capable of poetry, philosophy, music, dance, mythology, art, and invention on a wide technological front.

Like our imaginary airman, they were totally unaware that there is a law that must be complied with in order to achieve civilizational flight.

It doesn't pay to get into a serious battle over every acorn, but it also doesn't pay to back down over every acorn. It's important to be predictable to a certain extent, but it's also important not to be too predictable.

The lion that comes across a herd of gazelles doesn't massacre them, as an enemy would. It kills one

What's normal is for things to work. What's not normal is for things to fail.

Our schools are much like our prisons: they disappoint us because they only do what they're designed to do, and it annoys us that they don't do something else!

Increasing food production to feed an increased population results in yet another increase in population.