453 quotes found
“The premise of the Taker story is 'the world belongs to man'. … The premise of the Leaver story is 'man belongs to the world'.”
“If you alone found out what the lie was, then you're probably right—it would make no great difference. But if you ALL found out what the lie was, it might conceivably make a very great difference i...”
“The mythology of your culture hums in your ears so constantly that no one pays the slightest bit of attention to it. Of course man is conquering space and the atom and the deserts and the oceans an...”
“[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 ...”
“[T]he price you've paid is not the price of becoming human. It's not even the price of having the things you just mentioned. It's the price of enacting a story that casts mankind as the enemy of th...”
“No one species shall make the life of the world its own.' … That's one expression of the law. Here's another: 'The world was not made for any one species.”
“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 d...”
“If the world was made for us, then it BELONGS to us and we can do what we damn well please with it.”
“[N]ow we have a clearer idea what this story is all about: The world was made for man, and man was made to rule it.”
“If you've a notion of what man's heart is, wouldn't you say that maybe the whole effort of man on earth to build a civilization is simply man's frantic and frightened attempt to hide himself from h...”
“This is precisely how someone speaks who imagines that he is the world's divinely appointed ruler: 'I will not LET them starve. I will not LET the drought come. I will not LET the river flood.”
“Arise, my friend – the world is wailing for kindness – it is wailing for compassion – it is wailing for love.”
“Humanity is not a word my friend. It is a symbol – a symbol of hope – a symbol of wisdom – yet this very symbol has become disgraced by our faults and deluded justification of mistakes.”
“Societies in decline have no use for visionaries.”
“The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement.”
“A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.”
“The Civilized… murder their children by producing too many of them without being able to provide for their well-being. Morality or theories of false virtue stimulate them to manufacture cannon fodd...”
“You are wrong,” says the man. His voice is low and resonant. The metal walls of the dome, all the knives and swords and spears, all seem to vibrate with each of his words. “Your rulers and their pr...”
“Civilization has been a continuous struggle of the individual or of groups of individuals against the State and even against "society," that is, against the majority subdued and hypnotized by the ...”
“Though we became experimental creatures of our own devising, it’s important to bear in mind that we had no inkling of this process, let alone its consequences, until only the last six or seven of o...”
