55 Quotes by Wade Davis

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

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

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.

Risk discomfort and solitude for understanding.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.