Wade Davis Quotes

• The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you; they are unique manifestations of the human spirit.

  Wade Davis

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Unique

  "The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World". Book by Wade Davis, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 1, 2009.

  81 Copy quote

• A language is not just a body of vocabulary or a set of grammatical rules. ... Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind.

  Wade Davis

  Motivation, Inspiration, Vocabulary

  30 Copy quote

• The world can only appear monochromatic to those who persist in interpreting what they experience through the lens of a single cultural paradigm, their own. For those with the eyes to see and the heart to feel, it remains a rich and complex topography of the spirit.

  Wade Davis

  Heart, Eye, Lenses

  Wade Davis, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (2009). “The wayfinders: why ancient wisdom matters in the modern world”, House of Anansi Pr

  31 Copy quote

• If diversity is a source of wonder, its opposite - the ubiquitous condensation to some blandly amorphous and singularly generic modern culture that takes for granted an impoverished environment - is a source of dismay. There is, indeed, a fire burning over the earth, taking with it plants and animals, cultures, languages, ancient skills and visionary wisdom. Quelling this flame, and re-inventing the poetry of diversity is perhaps the most important challenge of our times.

  Wade Davis

  Animal, Flames, Opposites

  25 Copy quote

• Sensitivity to nature is not an innate attribute of indigenous peoples. It is a consequence of adaptive choices that have resulted in the development of highly specialized peripheral skills. but those choices in turn spring from a comprehensive view of nature and the universe in which man and woman are perceived as but elements inextricably linked to the whole.

  Wade Davis

  Spring, Men, Skills

  24 Copy quote

• So be patient. Do not compromise. And give your destiny time to find you.

  Wade Davis

  Destiny, Giving, Patient

  4 Copy quote

• The measure of a society is not only what it does but the quality of its aspirations.

  Wade Davis

  Quality, Doe, Aspiration

  27 Copy quote

• Cultural survival is not about preservation, sequestering indigenous peoples in enclaves like some sort of zoological specimens. Change itself does note destroy a culture. All societies are constantly evolving. Indeed a culture survives when it has enough confidence in its past and enough say in its future to maintain its spirit and essence through all the changes it will inevitably undergo.

  Wade Davis

  Past, Essence, Survival

  18 Copy quote

• What could be more lonely than to be enveloped in silence, to be the last of your people to speak your native tongue, to have no way to pass on the wisdom of the elders, to anticipate the promise of the children. This tragic fate is indeed the plight of someone somewhere roughly every two weeks.

  Wade Davis

  Lonely, Children, Fate

  23 Copy quote

• Risk discomfort and solitude for understanding.

  Wade Davis

  Understanding, Solitude, Risk

  Wade Davis (2010). “The Serpent and the Rainbow”, p.21, Simon and Schuster

  17 Copy quote

• The surface of the Earth itself is an immense loom upon which the sun weaves the fabric of existence.

  Wade Davis

  Fabric, Earth, Sun

  Wade Davis (2009). “Light at the Edge of the World: A Journey Through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures”, p.64, D & M Publishers

  21 Copy quote

• What is science but the pursuit of the truth? What is Buddhism but 2500 years of observation as to the nature of mind?

  Wade Davis

  Buddhism, Years, Mind

  20 Copy quote

• Heroes are never perfect, but they're brave, they're authentic, they're courageous, determined, discreet, and they've got grit.

  Wade Davis

  Hero, Perfect, Brave

  16 Copy quote

• If we accept that we are all cut from the same genetic cloth, all cultures share the same genius. And whether that genius is placed into technological wizardry which has been our great achievement, or, by contrast, placed into the unraveling of complex threads of memory inherent in a myth is simply a matter of choice.

  Wade Davis

  Memories, Cutting, Choices

  16 Copy quote

• Genocide, the physical extinction of a people, is universally condemned, but ethnocide, the destruction of people's way of life, is not only not condemned, it's universally celebrated as part of a development strategy.

  Wade Davis

  Motivation, Inspiration, People

  13 Copy quote

• Language is an old-growth forest of the mind.

  Wade Davis

  Growth, Mind, Forests

  Wade Davis, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (2009). “The wayfinders: why ancient wisdom matters in the modern world”, House of Anansi Pr

  14 Copy quote

• You know, once something freezes, it's solid. That's the key to the arctic - they didn't fear the cold, they made use of it.

  Wade Davis

  Keys, Use, Cold

  11 Copy quote

• All cultures through all time have constantly been engaged in a dance with new possibilities for life. Change is the one constant in human history.

  Wade Davis

  Life Changing, Culture, Possibility

  11 Copy quote

• Only, in Haiti, I realized, is it possible to drink rum and haggle with a god.

  Wade Davis

  Haiti, Drink, Rum

  5 Copy quote

• The problem is that those of us sympathetic with the plight of indigenous people view them as quaint and colorful, but somehow reduced to margins of history as the real world [(our world)] moves on We will be known as an era in which we stood by and either actively endorsed or passively accepted the massive destruction of both biological and cultural diversity on the planet.

  Wade Davis

  Real, Moving, Our World

  12 Copy quote

• Its haunting to realize that half of the languages of the world are teetering on the brink of extinction.

  Wade Davis

  Haunting, Extinction, Half

  16 Copy quote

• We accept it as normal that people who have never been on the land, who have no history or connection to the country, may legally secure the right to come in and, by the very nature of their enterprises, leave in their wake a cultural and physical landscape utterly transformed and desecrated. What's more, in granting such mining concessions, often initially for trivial sums to speculators from distant cities, companies cobbled together with less history than my dog, the government places no cultural or market value on the land itself.

  Wade Davis

  Country, Dog, Cities

  9 Copy quote

• To have that powder blown up your nose is rather like being shot out of a rifle barrel lined with Baroque paintings and landing on a sea of electricity.

  Wade Davis

  Motivation, Inspiration, Sea

  10 Copy quote

• Change is no threat to culture.

  Wade Davis

  Culture, Threat

  6 Copy quote

• In the West we cling to the past like limpets. In Haiti the present is the axis of all life. As in Africa, past and future are but distant measures of the present, and memories are as meaningless as promises.

  Wade Davis

  Memories, Past, Axes

  6 Copy quote

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