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

“I must try to enjoy all the graces that God has given me today. Grace cannot be hoarded. There are no banks where it can be deposited to be used when I feel more at peace with myself. If I do not make full use of these blessings, I will lose them forever.

God knows that we are all artists of life. One day, he gives us a hammer with which to make sculptures, another day he gives us brushes and paints with which to make a picture, or paper and a pencil to write with. But you cannot make a painting with a hammer, or a sculpture with a paintbrush. Therefore, however difficult it may be, I must accept today's small blessings, even if they seem like curses because I am suffering and it's a beautiful day, the sun is shining, and the children are singing in the street. This is the only way I will manage to leave my pain behind and rebuild my life.”
― Paulo Coelho, quote from The Zahir


“With blinded eyes I stared at the sky, this grey, endless sky of a crazy god, who had made life and death for his amusement.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, quote from Three Comrades


“If you label it this, then it can't be that.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test


“A persistent case of the bingos was enough to wash a man out of night carrier landings. That did not mean you were finished as a Navy pilot. It merely meant that you were finished so far as carrier ops were concerned, which meant that you were finished so far as combat was concerned, which meant you were no longer in the competition, no longer ascending the pyramid, no longer qualified for the company of those with the right stuff.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Right Stuff


“And now you see why some facts, some pieces of knowledge, have to be snuffed out as soon as they form. Curiosity would blow across such embers and burn this silo to the ground.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Wool Omnibus


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