The premise of the Taker story is ‘the world belongs to man’. … The premise of the Leaver story is ‘man belongs to the world’.
[A]ny species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.
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 indeed.
[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 the world.
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.
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.
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.
The obvious can sometimes be illuminating when perceived in an unhabitual way.
The journey itself is going to change you, so you don’t have to worry about memorizing the route we took to accomplish that change.
The sign stopped me– or rather, this text stopped me. Words are my profession; I seized these and demanded that they explain themselves, that they cease to be ambiguous.
Everyone in your culture knows this. Man was born to turn the world into paradise, but tragically he was born flawed. And so his paradise has always been spoiled by stupidty, greed, destructiveness, and shortsightedness.
Yes,I’m afraid you’re right. Trial and error isn’t a bad way to learn how to build an aircraft,but it can be a disastrous way to learn how to build a civilization.
A castaway in the sea was going down for the third time when he caught sight of a passing ship. Gathering his last strength, he waved frantically and called for help. Someone on board peered at him scornfully and shouted back, “Get a boat!
There is a difference between the inmates of your criminal prisons and the inmates of your cultural prison: The former understand that the distribution of wealth and power inside the prison had nothing to do with justice.
All paths lie together in the hand of god like a web endlessly woven, and yours and mine are no greater or less than the beetle’s or the squirrel’s or the sparrow’s. All are held together.
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.
The world is not going to survive very much longer as humanity’s captive.
We had been taken from The Wild and brought together in one place, because, for some strange reason, people found us interesting.
And every time the Takers stamp out a Leaver culture, a wisdom ultimately tested since the birth of mankind disappears from the world beyond recall.
You shouldn’t have to settle for rabbits if what you want is deer
I went out and had a drink. I needed to talk to someone, and solitary drinkers are lucky in this regard— they always have someone to talk to.