Top 100 Daniel Quinn Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Indigenous people believe that Man belongs to the World; civilized people believe that the World belongs to Man.”

— Daniel Quinn

2. “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 Quinn

3. “With man gone, will there be hope for gorilla?”

— Daniel Quinn

4. “The world doesn’t belong to us, we belong to it. Always have, always will. We belong to the world. We belong to the community of life on this planet – it doesn’t belong to us. We got confused about that, now it’s time to set the record straight.”

— Daniel Quinn

5. “There is no one right way to live.”

— Daniel Quinn

6. “TEACHER seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person.”

— Daniel Quinn

7. “It’s the idea that people living close to nature tend to be noble. It’s seeing all those sunsets that does it. You can’t watch a sunset and then go off and set fire to your neighbor’s tepee. Living close to nature is wonderful for your mental health.”

— Daniel Quinn

8. “People will listen when they’re ready to listen and not before. Don’t waste time with people who want to argue. They’ll keep you immobilized forever. Look for people who are already open to something new.”

— Daniel Quinn

9. “The obvious can sometimes be illuminating when perceived in an unhabitual way.”

— Daniel Quinn

10. “Don’t wait. Where do you expect to get by waiting? Doing is what teaches you. Doing is what leads to inspiration. Doing is what generates ideas. Nothing else, and nothing less.”

— Daniel Quinn

11. “I have amazing news for you. Man is not alone on this planet. He is part of a community, upon which he depends absolutely.”

— Daniel Quinn

12. “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.”

— Daniel Quinn

13. “Increasing food production to feed an increased population results in yet another increase in population.”

— Daniel Quinn

14. “You shouldn’t have to settle for rabbits if what you want is deer.”

— Daniel Quinn

15. “Lies are like sleeping pills. You should only use them when you absolutely have to. They spoil everything if you make a habit of them.”

— Daniel Quinn

16. “We’re not destroying the world because we’re clumsy. We’re destroying the world because we are, in a very literal and deliberate way, at war with it.”

— Daniel Quinn

17. “In fact, of course, there is no secret knowledge; no one knows anything that can’t be found on a shelf in the public library.”

— Daniel Quinn

18. “If you can’t discover what’s keeping you in, the will to get out soon becomes confused and ineffectual – “Ishmael.”

— Daniel Quinn

19. “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.”

— Daniel Quinn

20. “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.”

— Daniel Quinn

21. “The world is not going to survive very much longer as humanity’s captive.”

— Daniel Quinn

22. “Wow, just imagine missing school on the day when they were learning blue. You’d spend the rest of your life wondering what color the sky is.”

— Daniel Quinn

23. “We are all captives of a story.”

— Daniel Quinn

24. “From the animist point of view, humans belong in a sacred place because they themselves are sacred. Not sacred in a special way, not more sacred than anything else, but merely as sacred as anything else – as sacred as bison or salmon or crows or crickets or bears or sunflowers.”

— Daniel Quinn

25. “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. BUCKMINSTER FULLER.”

— Daniel Quinn

26. “Karl Marx recognized that workers without a choice are workers in chains. But his idea of breaking chains was for us to depose the pharaohs and then build the pyramids for ourselves, as if building pyramids is something we just can’t stop doing, we love it so much.”

— Daniel Quinn

27. “Blessed are those who do whatever they can wherever they are, for no one is devoid of resources or opportunities.”

— Daniel Quinn

28. “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.”

— Daniel Quinn

29. “But why? Why do you need prophets to tell you how you ought to live? Why do you need anyone to tell you how you ought to live.”

— Daniel Quinn

30. “Diversity, not uniformity, is what works.”

— Daniel Quinn

31. “There are indeed times when one should TRUST blindly, just as there are times when one should not. WISDOM consists in being able to tell one from the other.”

— Daniel Quinn

32. “Don’t try to drive the homeless into places we find suitable. Help them survive in places they find suitable.”

— Daniel Quinn

33. “When one does not see what one does not see, one does not even see that one is blind. – Paul Veyne.”

— Daniel Quinn

34. “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.”

— Daniel Quinn

35. “The world of the Takers is one vast prison, and except for a handful of Leavers scattered across the world, the entire human race is now inside that prison.”

— Daniel Quinn

36. “Making food a commodity to be owned was one of the great innovations of our culture. No other culture in history has ever put food under lock and key – and putting it there is the cornerstone of our economy, for if the food wasn’t under lock and key, who would work?”

— Daniel Quinn

37. “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.”

— Daniel Quinn

38. “I think what you’re groping for is that people need more than to feel scolded, more than to be made to feel stupid and guilty. They need more than a vision of doom. They need a vision of the world and of themselves that inspires them.”

— Daniel Quinn

39. “They made an ingenuous and disorganized effort to escape from captivity but ultimately failed, because they were unable to find the bars of the cage. If you can’t discover what’s keeping you in, the will to get out soon becomes confused and ineffectual.”

— Daniel Quinn

40. “You know how to split atoms, how to send explorers to the moon, how to splice genes, but you don’t know how people ought to live.”

— Daniel Quinn

41. “And this thought is a question: Why? “Why, why, why, why, why, why?” the tiger asks itself hour after hour, day after day, year after year, as it treads its endless path behind the bars of its cage. It cannot analyze the question or elaborate on it. If you were somehow able to ask the creature, “Why what?” it would be unable to answer you.”

— Daniel Quinn

42. “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 Quinn

43. “We’re straying from the path of salvation because we remember that we once belonged to the world and were content in that belonging.”

— Daniel Quinn

44. “Once you learn to discern the voice of Mother Culture humming in the background, telling her story over and over again to the people of your culture, you’ll never stop being conscious of it. Wherever you go for the rest of your life, you’ll be tempted to say to the people around you, “how can you listen to this stuff and not recognize it for what it is?”

— Daniel Quinn

45. “Children don’t need learning. They need access to what they want to learn outside the home.”

— Daniel Quinn

46. “Diversity, not uniformity, is what works. Our problem is not that people are living a bad way but rather that they’re all living the same way. The earth can accommodate many people living in a voraciously wasteful and pollutive way, it just can’t accommodate all of us living that way.”

— Daniel Quinn

47. “You’re captives of a civilization system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live.”

— Daniel Quinn

48. “Exactly. That’s what’s been happening here for the past ten thousand years: You’ve been doing what you damn well please with the world. And of course you mean to go right on doing what you damn well please with it, because the whole damn thing belongs to you.”

— Daniel Quinn

49. “We can argue about it for a thousand years, but there’s never going to be an argument powerful enough to end the argument, because every argument has a counterargument.”

— Daniel Quinn

50. “From infancy onward, children are the most fantastic learners in the world.”

— Daniel Quinn