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.
Daniel QuinnRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes that true progress requires dismantling oppressive systems, rather than merely managing them.
Daniel Quinn highlights the importance of not just redistributing power and wealth in existing oppressive structures, but instead, focusing on the need to eliminate these structures entirely. He suggests that real change and survival depend on addressing the root of the problem rather than making superficial adjustments that do not challenge the core issues.
Themes
FreedomPowerChangeOppressionRevolution
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about social justice, this quote can be used to emphasize the need for systemic change.
More from Daniel Quinn
All quotes →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.
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.
Daniel QuinnRead
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.
Daniel QuinnRead
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.
Daniel QuinnRead
The premise of the Taker story is 'the world belongs to man'. … The premise of the Leaver story is 'man belongs to the world'.
Daniel QuinnRead
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Reason is our soul's left hand, Faith her right, By these we reach divinity
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The future of religion is connected with the possibility of developing a faith in the possibilities of human experience and human relationships that will create a vital sense of the solidarity of human interests and inspire action to make that sense a reality.
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We have long forgotten the ritual by which the house of our life was erected. But when it is under assault and enemy bombs are already taking their toll, what enervated, perverse antiquities do they not lay bare in the foundations.
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