[A]ny species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.
You shouldn't have to settle for rabbits if what you want is deer
With gorilla gone, will there be hope for man?
Where are you looking at it from? Oh. From above. From outer space. What are you doing up there? I don’t know. Why aren’t you down on the surface?
Whenever a Taker couple talk about how wonderful it would be to have a big family, they're reenacting this scene behind the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They're saying to themselves, 'Of co...
They put their shoulders to the wheel during the day, stupefy themselves with drugs or television at night, and try not to think too searchingly about the world they’re leaving their children to cope...
There is no one right way to live.
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.
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 need man to belong to it. creatu...
The obvious can sometimes be illuminating when perceived in an unhabitual way.
The community of life that we see here at any given time isn't just a random collection. It's a collection of successes. It's the remainder that is left over when the failures have disappeared.
May the forests be with you and with your children.
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 inde...
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.
I don't think there's any loneliness greater than the loneliness to be found in a bad marriage. In solitary confinement, everyone knows you're lonely and feels sorry for you. In a bad marriage lonelin...
How easy it is first to leap to a false conclusion about someone and then to view everything he does in light of that conclusion.
Far and away the most futile admonition Christ ever offered was when he said, ‘Have no care for tomorrow. Don’t worry about whether you’re going to have something to eat. Look at the birds of the air....
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 voracio...
Diversity is a survival factor for the community itself. A community of a hundred million species can survive almost anything short of a global catastrophe.
But charisma only wins people’s attention. Once you have their attention, you have to have something to tell them.