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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True change comes from innovative thinking rather than simply rehashing old ideas.
This quote emphasizes the importance of fresh perspectives and innovative thinking in solving the world's challenges. It suggests that merely adapting outdated ideas to new situations is insufficient; rather, transformative solutions will emerge from thinkers who approach problems without preconceived notions or rigid frameworks.
Themes
InnovationChangeThinkingSolutionsCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of innovation in technology.
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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I think 90% of my ideas evaporate because I have a terrible memory and because I seem to be committed to not scribble anything down. As soon as I write it down, my mind rejects it.
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It is not the possession of truth, but the success which attends the seeking after it, that enriches the seeker and brings happiness to him.
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