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Quotes from My Ishmael — Daniel Quinn

1935–2018 United States

← All quotes by Daniel Quinn

13 quotes

Six billion of you wake up every morning and start devouring the world.

My Ishmael (1997)

That’s what governments are there for, to keep good things from happening.

My Ishmael (1997)

People seldom look very hard for things they don’t want to find.

My Ishmael (1997)

The schools are there to regulate the flow of young competitors into the job market.

My Ishmael (1997)

No two journeys are ever alike, because no two pupils are ever alike.

My Ishmael (1997)

Those who wish to imagine that God called every species to life in a final, changeless form are welcome to do so, but I’m incapable of embracing such a primitive scenario.

My Ishmael (1997)

Don’t make faces. It won’t hurt you to hear a new word.

My Ishmael (1997)

A system based on exchanging products inevitably channels wealth to a few, and no governmental change will ever be able to correct that. It isn’t a defect of the system, it’s intrinsic to the system.

My Ishmael (1997)

By the simple act of being locked up, food was transformed into a product—the fundamental product of your economy.

My Ishmael (1997)

Of course, there is no one right way for people to live, any more than there is one right way for birds to build nests or for spiders to spin webs.

My Ishmael (1997)

They’re sure that there must be all sorts of things wrong with ever tribal way of life, and of course they’re correct—if you mean by “wrong” something you don’t like.

My Ishmael (1997)

No story is devoid of meaning, if you know how to look for it. This is as true of nursery rhymes and daydreams as it is of novels and epic poems.

My Ishmael (1997)

I told him these numbers were hard to believe.
“Do the arithmetic yourself sometime, then you won’t have to believe it, you’ll know it.

My Ishmael (1997)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Daniel Quinn (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.