Tara Turner

“In different places, survival requires different things, based on the environment. Capacity for survival may be the ability to be changed by environment.”
― Robyn Davidson, Tracks: One Woman's Journey Across 1,700 Miles of Australian Outback

“One continues to learn things in life, then promptly forget them.”
― Robyn Davidson, Tracks: One Woman's Journey Across 1,700 Miles of Australian Outback

“many of us have been convinced that we carry the darkness within us, in our selfish genes. “It is simply human nature,” we’re told, “to rape and kill and enslave—and anyone who thinks otherwise is a foolish romantic.” This messaging not only offends our decency and dignity, it insults our intelligence. The depiction of human nature embedded in the NPP isn’t science; it’s a marketing campaign for the status quo.”
― Christopher Ryan, Civilized to Death: What Was Lost on the Way to Modernity

“Upon his first encounters with the native people he “discovered” in the West Indies, Columbus was struck by their kindness, generosity, and physical beauty. In a letter to the king and queen of Spain, he explained: “They are very simple and honest and exceedingly liberal with all they have, none of them refusing anything he may possess when he is asked for it. They exhibit great love toward all others in preference to themselves.” In his own journals, he was even more complimentary: “They are the best people in the world and above all the gentlest—without knowledge of what is evil—nor do they murder or steal… they love their neighbors as themselves and they have the sweetest talk in the world… always laughing.” A few pages on, in one of the most chilling pivots in recorded history, Columbus wrote: “They would make fine servants. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”
― Christopher Ryan, Civilized to Death: What Was Lost on the Way to Modernity