What is crucial to your survival as a race is not the redistribution of power and wealth within the prison but rather the destruction of the prison itself.
Daniel QuinnRead
[I]n Africa I was a member of a family—of a sort of family that the people of your culture haven't known for thousands of years. If gorillas were capable of such an expression, they would tell you that their family is like a hand, of which they are the fingers. They are fully aware of being a family but are very little aware of being individuals. Here in the zoo there were other gorillas—but there was no family. Five severed fingers do not make a hand.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the significance of familial bonds over individualism, using gorillas as a metaphor for interconnectedness within a family.
Daniel Quinn's quote reflects on the concept of family, suggesting that true familial connections go beyond mere individual existence. He contrasts the communal living of gorillas, who embody a sense of unity akin to fingers on a hand, with the disjointed nature of zoo gorillas, highlighting that without genuine connection and awareness of each other, family members lack a cohesive identity.
Themes
FamilyRelationshipsConnectionUnityIndividuality
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of family structures in understanding our identities.
More from Daniel Quinn
All quotes →If the world is saved, it will not be saved by old minds with new programs but by new minds with no programs at all.
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This law … 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.
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You're captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live. … You are captives—and you have made a captive of the world itself. That's what's at stake, isn't it?—your captivity and the captivity of the world.
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Do you see the slightest evidence anywhere in the universe that creation came to an end with the birth of man? Do you see the slightest evidence anywhere out there that man was the climax toward which creation had been straining from the beginning? ...Very far from it. The universe went on as before, the planet went on as before. Man's appearance caused no more stir than the appearance of jellyfish.
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The premise of the Taker story is 'the world belongs to man'. … The premise of the Leaver story is 'man belongs to the world'.
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