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• he began to speak to me, not in the jocular way of visitors to the menagerie but rather as one speaks to the wind or to the waves crashing on a beach, uttering that which must be said but which must not be heard by anyone.
• ‘Intensification of production to feed an increased population leads to a still greater increase in population.’
• “I mean that in the absence of food, baboons will organize themselves to find a meal, but in the absence of leopards they will never organize themselves to find a leopard.
• “Nonsense,” the others replied. “You know very well that the fruit of this tree nourishes only the gods. It can no more nourish Adam than the grasses of the oxen. He might take it into his mouth and swallow it, but it would pass through his body without benefit. Surely you don’t imagine that he might actually gain our knowledge by eating of this tr...
• The gods would have hung around saying, ‘Come on, Man, can’t you see that you’re nothing without this knowledge? Stop living off our bounty like a lion or a wombat. Here, have some of this fruit and you’ll instantly realize that you’re naked—as naked as any lion or wombat: naked to the world, powerless. Come on, have some of this fruit and become o...