Quotes from My Ishmael

Daniel Quinn ·  288 pages

Rating: (8.4K votes)


“Thinkers aren't limited by what they know, because they can always increase what they know. Rather they're limited by what puzzles them, because there's no way to become curious about something that doesn't puzzle you.”
― Daniel Quinn, quote from My Ishmael


“Children don't need learning. They need access to what they want to learn outside the home.”
― Daniel Quinn, quote from My Ishmael


“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.”
― Daniel Quinn, quote from My Ishmael


“Thinkers aren't limited by what they know, because they can always increase what they know. Rather they're limited by what puzzles them, because there's no way to become curious about something that doesn't puzzle you. If a thing falls outside the range of people's curiosity, then they simply cannot
make inquiries about it. It constitutes a blind spot — a spot of blindness that you can't even know is there until someone draws your attention to it.”
― Daniel Quinn, quote from My Ishmael


“Simple things are almost always the hardest to explain, Julie. Showing someone how to tie a shoelace is easy. Explaining it is almost impossible.”
― Daniel Quinn, quote from My Ishmael



“What's normal is for things to work. What's not normal is for things to fail.”
― Daniel Quinn, quote from My Ishmael


“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.”
― Daniel Quinn, quote from My Ishmael


“The rules that govern competition between species are (and must be) very different from the rules that govern competition within species.”
― Daniel Quinn, quote from My Ishmael


“You wouldn't know from experience that small children are the most powerful learning engines in the known universe.”
― Daniel Quinn, quote from My Ishmael


“We made it back to the airport without getting mugged, stoned, shot at, pounced on, bombed, shelled, garroted, gassed, pitched into, caught in a cross fire, sniped at, blockaded, napalmed, or trip-wired. No one even hit us with a water balloon.”
― Daniel Quinn, quote from My Ishmael



“No invention ever comes into being fully developed in a single step, from nothing.
Ten thousand inventions had to be in place before Edison could invent the electric light-bulb.”
― Daniel Quinn, quote from My Ishmael


“A system based on exchanging products inevitably channels wealth to a few, and no governmental change will ever be able to correct that. It isn’t a defect of the system, it’s intrinsic to the”
― Daniel Quinn, quote from My Ishmael


About the author

Daniel Quinn
Born place: in Omaha, Nebraska, The United States
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Popular quotes

“Be that as it may, there is fixed in my mind a certain opinion of long [21] standing, namely that there exists a God who is able to do anything and by whom I, such as I am, have been created. How do I know that he did not bring it about that there is no earth at all, no heavens, no extended thing, no shape, no size, no place, and yet bringing it about that all these things appear to me to exist precisely as they do now?”
― René Descartes, quote from Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy


“Does a population have informed consent when that population is not taught the inner workings of its monetary system, and then is drawn, all unknowing, into economic adventures?”
― Frank Herbert, quote from The Dosadi Experiment


“Be like the date that grows sweeter and sweeter , even though the soil that nourishes it is rocky and harsh”
― Anita Amirrezvani, quote from The Blood of Flowers


“Io ti ho nominato regina.
Ve n'è di più alte di te, di più alte.
Ve né di più pure di te, di più pure.
Ve né di più belle di te, di più belle.
Ma tu sei la regina.
Quando vai per le strade
nessuno ti riconosce.
Nessuno vede la tua corona di cristallo, nessuno guarda
il tappeto d'oro rosso
che calpesti dove passi,
il tappeto che non esiste.
E quando t'affacci
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nel mio corpo, scuotono
il cielo le campane,
e un inno empie il mondo.
Tu sola ed io,
tu sola ed io, amor mio,
lo udiamo.”
― Pablo Neruda, quote from The Captain's Verses


“We're all people", he said simply. "It doesn't matter if you're two, thirty-two, or ninety-two. Everyone wants to be treated with respect. Everyone wants to feel like they matter in this world.”
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