North American Beavers

Famous quotes containing the words north american, north, american and/or beavers:

    The compulsion to do good is an innate American trait. Only North Americans seem to believe that they always should, may, and actually can choose somebody with whom to share their blessings. Ultimately this attitude leads to bombing people into the acceptance of gifts.
    Ivan Illich (b. 1926)

    There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.
    —Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)

    The immense popularity of American movies abroad demonstrates that Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof.
    Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)

    One has but to observe a community of beavers at work in a stream to understand the loss in his sagacity, balance, co-operation, competence, and purpose which Man has suffered since he rose up on his hind legs.... He began to chatter and he developed Reason, Thought, and Imagination, qualities which would get the smartest group of rabbits or orioles in the world into inextricable trouble overnight.
    James Thurber (1894–1961)