Condor Quotes

“Do you thinking not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth?"--Robert Redford from the 1975 movie Three Days of the Condor”

“Ecology is beginning to slowly shift focus with tentative explorations of what the world would look like if process, rather than matter were the basis for reality What if we defined a species in terms of its life processes? We might seriously doubt whether the California condor or the tall grass prairie can be 'saved' or even 'restored.' Perhaps we can re-create some local conditions that foster a few nests of condors or a few acres of prairie. But the life process of the condor ended with the urbanization of the California foothills and the living ebb and flow of the tall grass prairies died with the plowing of the Great Plains. What if we suggested that a thing is what it does? In this light, the Rocky Mountain locust was a immense aperiodic energy flow that linked life processes on a continental scale.This notion of life-as-process might seem unusual in a society in which material existence is primary. But such a perception informs our deepest understanding of life. Indeed, life-as-process underlies our notion of euthanasia. When loved ones are simply bodies, devoid of the capacity to care, respond, or relate again a away that we can recognize as being "them," we understand that they are gone even before they are dead.”

“Vast skies in the Australian desertwaves that don't movewe slide surf glide like condors”

“The rarer they get, the fewer meanings animals can have. Eventually rarity is all they are made of. The condor is an icon of extinction. There's little else to it now but being the last of its kind. And in this lies the diminution of the world. How can you love something, how can you fight to protect it, if all it means is loss?”

“Over the souls of men spread the condor wings of colossal monsters and all manner of evil things prey upon the heart and soul and body of Man. Yet it may be in some far day the shadows shall fade and the Prince of Darkness be chained forever in his hell. And till then mankind can but stand up stoutly to the monsters in his own heart and without, and with the aid of God he may yet triumph.”

“The ugliest thing in America is greed, the lust for power and domination, the lunatic ideology of perpetual Growth - with a capital G. 'Progress' in our nation has for too long been confused with 'Growth'; I see the two as different, almost incompatible, since progress means, or should mean, change for the better - toward social justice, a livable and open world, equal opportunity and affirmative action for all forms of life. And I mean all forms, not merely the human. The grizzly, the wolf, the rattlesnake, the condor, the coyote, the crocodile, whatever, each and every species has as much right to be here as we do.”

“Ask them, then. ...Ask them when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask them when their engines stop. Ask them, when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You want to know something? They won't want us to ask them. They'll just want us to get it.”

“He had his eyes closed androcked himself so much that everyone thought he wouldsoon crash to the ground. And then it happened. Hecrashed to the ground. Surprised, he lay on the groundon his side, not sure what had happened, looking around.Next he jumped up and listened to Matica’s singing again,starting to rock himself once more. His eyes closed slowly,his beak opened. And then he crashed to the ground a secondtime. This time he kept lying down, spreading his freewing up into the air and waving it to the tune of the melody.Strange sounds came out of his beak. It was a gruntbut more than a grunt, as if he was really enjoying himself,as if he would follow Matica’s words and would singor hum as well.”