If the world was made for us, then it BELONGS to us and we can do what we damn well please with it.

[I]n Africa I was a member of a family—of a sort of family that the people of your culture haven't known for thousands of years. If gorillas were capable of such an expression, they would tell you that their family is like a hand, of which they are the fingers. They are fully aware of being a family but are very little aware of being individuals. Here in the zoo there were other gorillas—but there was no family. Five severed fingers do not make a hand.

But why? Why do you need prophets to tell you how you ought to live? Why do you need anyone to tell you how you ought to live

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.

Far and away the most futile admonition Christ ever offered was when he said, 'Have no care for tomorrow. Don't worry about whether you're going to have something to eat. Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, but God takes perfect care of them. Don't you think he'll do the same for you?' In our culture the overwhelming answer to that question is, 'Hell no!' Even the most dedicated monastics saw to their sowing and reaping and gathering into barns.

We're straying from the path of salvation because we remember that we once belonged to the world and were content in that belonging.

We're not destroying the world because we're clumsy. We're destroying the world because we are, in a very literal and deliberate way, at war with it.