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 premise of the Taker story is 'the world belongs to man'. … The premise of the Leaver story is 'man belongs to the world'.

Children don't need learning. They need access to what they want to learn outside the home.

But we're not humanity, we're just one culture - one culture out of hundreds of thousands that have lived their vision on this planet and sung their song. If it were humanity that needed changing, then we'd be out of luck. But it isn't humanity that needs changing, it's just...us.

[A]ny species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.

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.

From infancy onward, children are the most fantastic learners in the world.