Mark Rowlands Quotes

There is an Iroquois myth that describes a choice the nation was once forced to make. The myth has various forms. This is the simplest version. A council of the tribes was called to decide where to move on for the next hunting season. What the council had not known, however, was that the place they eventually chose was a place inhabited by wolves. Accordingly, the Iroquois became subject to repeated attacks, during which the wolves gradually whittled down their numbers. They were faced with a choice: to move somewhere else or to kill the wolves. The latter option, they realized, would diminish them. It would make them the sort of people they did not want to be. And so they moved on. To avoid repetition of their earlier mistake, they decided that in all future council meetings someone should be appointed to represent the wolf. Their contribution would be invited with the question, 'Who speaks for wolf?

Cheaters never prosper, we tell ourselves. But the ape in us knows it's not true. Clumsy, untutored, cheats never prosper. They are discovered and suffer the consequences [ ... ]But what we apes despise is the clumsiness of their effort, the ineptness, the gaucherie. The ape in us does not despise the cheating itself; [ ... ]

On every long run that has gone right, there comes a point where thinking stops and thoughts begin.

Deception, machination and mendacity lie at the core of human intelligence, like worms coiled at the core of a apple

Pheidippides ran twenty-six miles from Marathon to Athens with news of the Greek victory.

Civilization is only possible for deeply unpleasant animals. It is only an ape that can be truly civilized.

In the end, it is our defiance that redeems us. If wolves had a religion – if there was a religion of the wolf – that it is what it would tell us.

What is most important when the time comes - and it always will - is to live your life with the coldness of a wolf.