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

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.

five severed fingers do not make a hand

[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.

If the world is saved, it will not be saved by old minds with new programs but by new minds with no programs at all.

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

No one species shall make the life of the world its own.' … That's one expression of the law. Here's another: 'The world was not made for any one species.