Wow, just imagine missing school on the day when they were learning blue. You'd spend the rest of your life wondering what color the sky is.

he began to speak to me, not in the jocular way of visitors to the menagerie but rather as one speaks to the wind or to the waves crashing on a beach, uttering that which must be said but which must not be heard by anyone.

Lies are like sleeping pills. You should only use them when you absolutely have to. They spoil everything if you make a habit of them.

All paths lie together in the hand of god like a web endlessly woven, and yours and mine are no greater or less than the beetle's or the squirrel's or the sparrow's. All are held together.

Now we have a clearer idea what this story is all about: The world was made for man, and man was made to rule it.

The world doesn't belong to us, we belong to it. Always have, always will. We belong to the world. We belong to the community of life on this planet -- it doesn't belong to us. We got confused about that, now it's time to set the record straight.

TEACHER seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person.

I'm not an anthropology buff, but I've read enough of it to know that the Zuni don't think that their way is the way for everyone, and that the Navajo don't think their way is the way for everyone. Each of them has a way that works well for them.

There is no one right way to live.

The greatest discovery any alien anthropologist could make about our culture is our overriding response to failure: If it didn't work last year, do it AGAIN this year (and if possible do it MORE).

And every time the Takers stamp out a Leaver culture, a wisdom ultimately tested since the birth of mankind disappears from the world beyond recall.

The mythology of your culture hums in your ears so constantly that no one pays the slightest bit of attention to it. Of course man is conquering space and the atom and the deserts and the oceans and the elements. According to your mythology, this is what he was BORN to do.

But charisma only wins people's attention. Once you have their attention, you have to have something to tell them.

Once you learn to discern the voice of Mother Culture humming in the background, telling her story over and over again to the people of your culture, you'll never stop being conscious of it. Wherever you go for the rest of your life, you'll be tempted to say to the people around you, how can you listen to this stuff and not recognize it for what it is?

People will listen when they're ready to listen and not before. Don't waste time with people who want to argue. They'll keep you immobilized forever. Look for people who are already open to something new.

You're captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live.... You are captives -- and you have made a captive of the world itself. That's what's at stake, isn't it? -- your captivity and the captivity of the world.

The mythology of your culture hums in your ears so constantly that no one pays the slightest bit of attention to it. Of course man is conquering space and the atom and the deserts and the oceans and the elements. According to your mythology, this is what he was born to do.

The obvious can sometimes be illuminating when perceived in an unhabitual way.

The people who are horrified by the idea of children learning what they want to learn when they want to learn it have not accepted the very elementary psychological fact that people (all people, of every age) remember the things that are important to them -- the things they need to know -- and forget the rest.

Courage is the virtue of the free.