Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Wade Davis

Quote by Wade Davis

“If diversity is a source of wonder, its opposite - the ubiquitous condensation to some blandly amorphous and singulary 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 importent challenge of our times.”

Quote by Wade Davis

Book:The wayfinders: why ancient wisdom matters in the modern world
Create image

Work

The wayfinders: why ancient wisdom matters in the modern world

This book delves into the timeless insights and practices from various ancient cultures, examining how they can inform and enrich modern living. It investigates the principles and philosophies that have stood the test of time and offers perspectives on how they might be applied in today's world. more

Author

Wade Davis
Wade Davis

Wade Davis is a Canadian-born anthropologist, ethnobotanist, and author born December 14, 1953. He serves as Professor of Anthropology and Ethnology at the University of British Columbia and is a former Explorer-in-Residence at National Geographic. Davis is renowned for his research on indigenous cultures in the Amazon and Himalayas, with major works including The Serpent and the Rainbow and Into the Silence. His career focuses on preserving cultural diversity and traditional ecological knowledge. more

You May Also Like

“We have got some very big problems confronting us and let us not make any mistake about it, human history in the future is fraught with tragedy ... It's only through people making a stand against that tragedy and being doggedly optimistic that we are going to win through. If you look at the plight of the human race it could well tip you into despair, so you have to be very strong.”

NatureDiversitySocial JusticeEnvironmental Justice
Author:Robert James Brown
Create image

“Our categories are important. We cannot organize a social life, a political movement, or our individual identities and desires without them. The fact that categories invariably leak and can never contain all the relevant "existing things" does not render them useless, only limited. Categories like “woman,” “butch,” “lesbian,” or “transsexual” are all imperfect, historical, temporary, and arbitrary. We use them, and they use us. We use them to construct meaningful lives, and they mold us into historically specific forms of personhood. Instead of fighting for immaculate classifications and impenetrable boundaries, let us strive to maintain a community that understands diversity as a gift, sees anomalies as precious, and treats all basic principles with a hefty dose of skepticism.”

PoliticsHistorySocietyIdentityDiversityLabelsWomanLesbianCategorizationTranssexual
Author:Gayle Rubin
Create image

“The American identity has never been a singular one and the voices of poets invariably sing, in addition to their own, the voices of those around them.”

DiversityMulticulturalismWriters And WritingAmericansBlack History MonthPoets And PoetryContemporary PoetryMulticulturalismoAmerican IdentityNational Poetry MonthWorld Poetry DayNational History DayPoem In Your Pocket DayAmerican PoetsContemporary PoetsContemporary Authors
Book:The American Poet Who Went Home Again
Create image

“Along with the mystical wonderment and sense of ecological responsibility that comes with the recognition of connectedness, more disturbing images come to mind. When applied to economics, connectedness seems to take the form of chain stores, multinational corporations, and international trade treaties which wipe out local enterprise and indigenous culture. When I think of it in the realm of religion, I envision smug missionaries who have done such a good job of convincing native people everywhere that their World-Maker is the same as God, and by this shoddy sleight of hand have been steadily impoverishing the world of the great fecundity and complex localism of belief systems that capture truths outside the Western canon. And I wonder—if everything's connected, does that mean that everything can be manipulated and controlled centrally by those who know how to pull strings at strategic places?”

DiversityControlConnectednessDisconnection
Author:Malcolm Margolin
Create image

“There's nothing wrong with your color, being you," he said firmly. "Nothing wrong with what the good Lord gives us in His world, Cussy Mary." He didn't know, couldn't know, the load I'd carried as a Blue, the scorn and hatred and gruesome marriage. How dare Pa call me vain and now Jackson. How dare he too? "Nothing wrong—" Jackson repeated. I stepped back and shot out a shaky hand. "No, Jackson Lovett, you're wrong. There is nothing wrong with your color in your world, a world that wants only whiteness.”

DiversityEmpathyRacismBigotryMarginalism
Book:The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek
Create image