Ishmael (Ishmael, #1)

by Daniel Quinn

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.

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

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

Perhaps the flaw in man is exactly this: that he doesn’t know how he ought to live.”