21 Quotes by Lawrence Anthony

The only good cage is an empty cage.

Elephants operate on a steadfast principle that all other lifeforms must give way to them, and as far as they were concerned, foreign tourists at a sit down dinner around a swimming pool were no different than a troop of baboons at a swimming hole.

Every wild thing is in tune with its surroundings, awake to its fate and in absolute harmony with the planet. Their attention is focused totally outwards. Humans, on the other hand, tend to focus introspectively on their own lives too often, brooding and magnifying problems that the animal kingdom would not waste a millisecond of energy upon. To most people, the magnificent order of the natural world where life and death actually mean something has become unrecognizable.

But perhaps the most important lesson I learned is that there are no walls between humans and the elephants except those that we put up ourselves, and that until we allow not only elephants, but all living creatures their place in the sun, we can never be whole ourselves.

In our noisy cities we tend to forget the things our ancestors knew on a gut level: that the wilderness is alive, that its whispers are there for all to hear - and to respond to.

The Americans were understandably on hair triggers. There was a good reason for all of this security. For despite TV images of quick victory, much of Baghdad certainly had not fallen and firefights with die-hard Ba’athists loyal to Saddam Hussein were raging all over the city.

Our inability to think beyond our own species, or to be able to co-habit with other life forms in what is patently a massive collaborative quest for survival, is surely a malady that pervades the human soul.

Workable solutions for Earth are urgently needed. Saving seals and tigers, or fighting yet another oil pipeline through a wilderness area, while laudable, is merely shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic.

I again flourished my papers: “Here’re my credentials from the Coalition Administration.” The American scrutinized the papers, shook his head in amazement, and smiled. “A South African,” he said. “You’re sure a long way from home.” He radioed through for instructions and indicated that I should bring my hired car up to the side of the roadblock and wait.