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...

We had been taken from The Wild and brought together in one place, because, for some strange reason, people found us interesting.

Within your culture as a whole, there is in fact no significant thrust toward global population control. The point to see is that there never will be such a thrust so long as you’re enacting...

[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...

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...

If you go to Singapore or Amsterdam or Seoul or Buenos Aires or Islamabad or Johannesburg or Tampa or Istanbul or Kyoto, you’ll find that the people differ wildly in the way they dress, in...

inspiration.” Writing is what generates ideas. Nothing else-and nothing less. Don’t meditate, don’t do yoga, don’t do drugs. Just write.

But we’re not humanity, we’re just one culture – one culture out of hundreds of thousands that have lived their vision on this planet and sung their song. If it were humanity that needed changing,...

Diversity is a survival factor for the community itself. A community of a hundred million species can survive anything short of total global catastrophe. Within that hundred million will be thousands that could survive a...

The evening I went for a walk. To walk for the sake of walking is something I seldom do.Inside my apartment I’d felt inexplicably anxious. I needed to talk to someone, to be reassured. Or...

Putting food under lock and key was one of the great innovations of your culture. No other culture in history has ever put food under lock and key – and putting it there is the...

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 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.

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...

The world is a very, very fine place. It wasn’t a mess. It didn’t need to be conquered and ruled by man. In other words, the world doesn’t belong to man – but it does...

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

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...

PharaohsIt took Khufu twenty-three years to build his Great Pyramid at Giza, where some eleven hundred stone blocks, each weighing about two and a half tons, had to be quarried, moved, and set in place...

[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...

Westereners often think that the East is one vast Buddhist temple, which is rather like thinking the West is one vast Carthusian monastery. If the [Western people who like Buddhism] were to visit the East,...

To each is given its moment in the blaze, its spark to be surrendered to another when it is sent, so that the blaze may go on. None may deny its spark to the general...

The story the Leavers have been enacting for the past three million years isn ‘ t a story of conquest and rule. Enacting it doesn ‘ t give them power. Enacting it gives them lives...

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...

[Y]our agricultural revolution is not an event like the Trojan War, isolated in the distant past and without relevance to your lives today. The work begun by those neolithic farmers in the Near East has...

We make our journey in the company of others; the deer, the rabbit, the bison, and the quail walk before us, and the lion, the eagle, the wolf, the vulture, and the hyena walk behind...

It’s not MAN who is the scourge of the world, it’s a single culture. One culture out of hundreds of thousands of cultures. Our culture.

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

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....

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. […] Naturally a well-run prison must...

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.

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...

how can you listen to this stuff and not recognize it for what it is?

Its the idea that people living close to nature tend to be noble. Its seeing all those sunsets that does it. You cant watch a sunset and then go off and set fire to your...

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts...

To you, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism look very different, but to me they look the same. Many of you would say that something like Buddhism doesn’t even belong on the list, since it...

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...

Diversity, not uniformity, is what works.

The greatest discovery any alien anthropologist could make about our culture is our overriding response to failure: If it didn’t work last year, do it AGAIN this year (and if possible do it MORE)

The people of your culture cling with fanatical tenacity to the specialness of man. They want desperately to perceive a vast gulf between man and the rest of creation. This mythology of human superiority justifies...

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...

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.

If the world was made for us, then it BELONGS to us and we can do what we damn well please with it.

It is in fact an orderly community. The green plants are food for the plant eaters, which are food for the predators, and some of those predators are food for still other predators. And what’s...

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.

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.

The premise of the Taker story is ‘the world belongs to man’. … The premise of the Leaver story is ‘man belongs to the world’.

In effect, you’re saying that if you knew how you oughtt to live, then the flaw is man could be controlled. If you knew how you ought to live, you wouldn’t be forever screwing up...

[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.

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.

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...