Quotes from Daniel Quinn

If prophecies about Christ must wait upon their fulfillment to be understood, why shouldn't the same be true of prophecies about Antichrist? In other words, we can't really know what John was talking about until it actually happens, so the Antichrist is almost certain to be different from whatever we imagine him to be.

The relevant measures are not ease and difficulty. The relevant measures are readiness and unreadiness. If the time isn't right for a new idea, no power on earth can make it catch on, but if the time is right, it will sweep the world like wildfire.

All too often the people of our culture think they're really doing something if they're out there fighting bad things and getting laws passed. Just look at what we've accomplished by outlawing drugs and waging a trillion-dollar War on Drugs! (Nothing!)

You're captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live.

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.

When one does not see what one does not see, one does not even see that one is blind. —Paul Veyne

You'll know you're among the people of your culture if the food is all owned, if it's all under lock and key." "Hmm

When Jesus departed, he left no one behind who was the message.

Karl Marx recognized that workers without a choice are workers in chains. But his idea of breaking chains was for us to depose the pharaohs and then build the pyramids for ourselves, as if building pyramids is something we just can't stop doing, we love it so much.

As the Takers see it, the gods gave man the same choice they gave Achilles: a brief life of glory, or a long, uneventful life in obscurity. And the Takers chose a brief life of glory.

couldn't go on, and in my anguish at not being able to tell him this, I thought him this, with all the mental power I possessed. He was stunned—as was I when I saw that he'd heard my mental cry.

describes how unchecked population growth is exponential while the growth of the food supply is expected to be arithmetical, thereby inevitably resulting—he reasoned—in a not-too-distant global famine

Everyone in your culture knows this. Man was born to turn the world into a paradise, but tragically he was born flawed. And so his paradise has always been spoiled by stupidity, greed, destructiveness, and shortsightedness.

What you do is to teach a hundred what I taught you, and inspire each of them to teach a hundred. That's how it's always done.

you never really know how to handle a problem until you actually have it.

We can argue about it for a thousand years, but there's never going to be an argument powerful enough to end the argument, because every argument has a counterargument.

I needed to confess my sin: I was once again having impure thoughts about saving the world.

Once you learn to discern the voice of Mother Culture humming in the background, telling her story over and over again to the people of your culture, you'll never stop being conscious of it. Wherever you go for the rest of your life, you'll be tempted to say to the people around you, 'How can you listen to this stuff and not recognize it for what it is?

Only slaves love being powerful. HANS ERICH NOSSACK

THIS LAW THAT YOU HAVE so admirably described defines the limits of competition in the community of life. You may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down your competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food. In other words, you may compete but you may not wage war." "Yes. As you said, it's the peace-keeping law.

No, the founders of our culture didn't just fall into a lifestyle of total dependence on agriculture, they had to whip themselves into it, and the whip they used was this meme: Growing all your own food is the best way to live. Nothing less could imaginably have done this amazing trick.

Your sufferings must be borne, for you suffer in the cause of good. See how great we have become! ...Though your groans fill the air, isn't it sweeter to live in our own hands than in the hands of the gods?

What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it, written as well as you, do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself—and thus make yourself indispensable.

The revolt hadn't been put down, it had just dwindled away into a fashion statement.