Melvis

“The sign stopped me-- or rather, this text stopped me. Words are my profession; I seized these and demanded that they explain themselves, that they cease to be ambiguous.”
― Daniel Quinn, Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

“The world of the Takers is one vast prison, and except for a handful of Leavers scattered across the world, the entire human race is now inside that prison. [...] Naturally a well-run prison must have a prison industry. I'm sure you see why."
"Well... it helps to keep the inmates busy, I suppose. Takes their minds off the boredom and futility of their lives."
"Yes. Can you name yours?"
"Our prison industry? Not offhand. I suppose it's obvious."
"Quite obvious, I would say."
I gave it some thought. "Consuming the world."
Ishmael nodded. "Got it on the first try.”
― Daniel Quinn, Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

“If there are forty thousand people in an area that can only support thirty thousand, it's no kindness to bring in food from the outside to maintain them at forty thousand. That just guarantees that the famine will continue."

"True. But all the same, it's hard just to sit by and let them starve."

"This is precisely how someone speaks who imagines that he is the world's divinely appointed ruler: 'I will not *let* them starve. I will not *let* the drought come. I will not *let* the river flood.' It is the gods who *let* these things, not you.”
― Daniel Quinn, Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

“There is a difference between the inmates of your criminal prisons and the inmates of your cultural prison: The former understand that the distribution of wealth and power inside the prison had nothing to do with justice.”
― Daniel Quinn, Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit