“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 them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will ACT like lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now.”

Daniel Quinn

Daniel Quinn - “There's nothing fundamentally wrong with...” 1

Similar quotes

“[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 enemy of the world.”

Daniel Quinn
Read more

“This is a work of fiction. Still, given an infinite number of possible worlds, it must be true on one of them. And if a story set in an infinite number of possible worlds is true in one of them, then it must be true in all of them. So maybe, it's not as fictional as we think.”

Neil Gaiman
Read more

“There are nearly thirteen million people in the world. None of those people is an extra. They're all the leads of their own stories. They have to be given their due.”

Charlie Kaufman
Read more

“Not given to boasting, which was a waste of breath-only a man who cannot conquer his deficiencies feels the need to convince the world he has none.”

Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman
Read more

“Now the proper good of a creature is to surrender itself to its Creator - to enact intellectually, volitionally and emotionally, that relationship which is given in the mere fact of its being a creature when it does so, it is good and happy.”

C.S. Lewis
Read more