John Cunningham Lilly

John Cunningham Lilly: Graduate of Caltech and the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. Founded the Communication Research Institute for the biomedical study of communication of man and dolphin.

We are often asked, "If the dolphins are so intelligent, why aren't they ruling the world? My very considered answer to this is - they may be too wise to try to rule the world. The Mind of the Dolphin, 1967.

 

I feel that it is a very insecure position to want to rule all of the other species and the vast resources of our planet. Ibid.

 

If the whaling industry is a good example of the way we treat harmless superior beings in the sea, imagine how we would treat harmless superior beings arriving in space ships. Ibid.

 

Why has the theory of a mind in other creatures become persona non grata and discredited over the years? I suggest that it is because man has been concentrating all of his scientific efforts in areas of endeavor in which this presumption of the mind is totally inappropriate, Ibid.

 

Economic gain is still mightier than the Golden Rule. Ibid.

 

A belief does not make a true fact. Ibid.

 

Until we live with dolphins and they with us, the dolphin mind remains opaque to us, and the human mind remains dryly out of reach of dolphin teaching. Ibid.

 

Though the dolphins are different (even alien), they are probably quite as flexible, educable, and as intelligent as we are. Ibid.