Ishmael (Ishmael, #1)

by Daniel Quinn

contradict unquestioned beliefs of our culture: that the knowledge of good and evil, far from being harmful, is wholesome and beneficial; that agriculture is a blessing, not a curse; that no enmity exists between herders and tillers of the soil, and the foods they produce are equally worthy of divine blessing.

a paradox: ‘Intensification of production to feed an increased population leads to a still greater increase in population.’

WITH MAN GONE, WILL THERE BE HOPE FOR GORILLA?

couldn’t go on, and in my anguish at not being able to tell him this, I thought him this, with all the mental power I possessed. He was stunned—as was I when I saw that he’d heard my mental cry.

Using them in this sense, do the words takers and leavers have any heavy connotation for you?”

“And so your account of creation ends, ‘And finally man appeared.’ ” “Yes.”

Newton’s achievement was not in discovering the phenomenon of gravity, it was in formulating the phenomenon as a law.”

“Yes. In the wild, the lion kills a gazelle and eats it. It doesn’t kill a second gazelle to save for tomorrow. The deer eats the grass that’s there. It doesn’t cut the grass down and save it for the winter. But these are things the Takers do.”

but there are animals that store food for later use.

“It’s clear that any action we take will be good for some and evil for others, so let’s take no action at all. Then

I pray about teeth—doesn’t everyone? I don’t have time to floss. You know. Hang in there, I tell them; I’ll get around to you before it’s too late. But during the second night a molar that was way, way in the back gave up the ghost. The next morning I found a dentist who agreed to take it out and give it a decent burial.

too funy

We don’t want to know a way to live that works well. We want to know the one right way.

“Yes, that’s true. Donald Trump can do a lot of things I can’t, but he can no more get out of the prison than I can. But what does this have to do with justice?”

why donald trump?