Nowadays we raise our children in a cocoon of domesticated security, far from any sense of risk or adventure.
Man can be chained, but he cannot be domesticated.
A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the door to its room. You enter its room with bravura, holding a chair at the thing and shouting, "Simba!
There had been a popular joke on Freedom, started by a man named Calder. Looking down from space, he had said, the dominant life forms on Earth were obviously the cereals and other grasses. They occupied all the most desirable and fertile land; and they had tamed insects and animals to care for them. In particular, they had domesticated the bipeds to nurture and cultivate them and to save and plant their seed. Now, watching the farmers, Alex could easily imagine that they were worshiping and genuflecting before their masters.
We have been God-like in our planned breeding of our domesticated plants and animals, but we have been rabbit-like in our unplanned breeding of ourselves.
In the same way humans have domesticated sheep and other animals by murdering the strong ones and breeding the docile, obedient ones, the powers-that-be have done the same with the masses.
No animal ever has an ugly body until it is domesticated. It is the same with the human body.
That in man which cannot be domesticated is not his evil but his goodness.
The amount which cannot be harnessed and domesticated, but insists on its own form of activity rather than one which is offered ready made, is the energy used for the creation of art.
The poor aren't defeated. We're domesticated.
We have all this Paleolithic art that suggests that our ancestors really venerated animals and that they depended on wild animals to survive - as opposed to domesticated animals that we depend on. Would it radically change things if we had more rhinos in our midst? I kind of suspect it would.
To live in Venice is like being domesticated in the heart of an opal.
I reckon domesticated cats have a pretty good life.
The goddess Artemis had a twin brother, Apollo, the many-faceted god of the Sun. He was her male counterpart: his domain was the city, hers the wilderness; his was the sun, hers the moon; his the domesticated flocks, hers the wild, untamed animals; he was the god of music, she was the inspiration for round dances on the mountains.
Why were there far more species of domesticated animals in Eurasia than in the Americas? The Americas harbor over a thousand native wild mammal species, so you might initially suppose that the Americas offered plenty of starting material for domestication.
Measles and TB evolved from diseases of our cattle, influenza from a disease of pigs, and smallpox possibly from a disease of camels. The Americas had very few native domesticated animal species from which humans could acquire such diseases.
I've been trying really hard to be more domesticated. It's not in my nature to clean and cook, and so I've been really good about it.
I know that most domesticated animals aren't indigenous to this country. So guess what, cat? You can beat it. Go back to Catalina Island or Catalonia, Spain, or Katmandu, or wherever the hell your hairy ass is from! 'Cause this is America and around here - Katmandon't.
God is God, He is not tame and domesticated like we sometimes (try to) make Him.
Anybody who has ever owned a dog who barked when strangers came near its owner's property has experienced the essential continuity between animal territoriality and human property. Our domesticated cousins of the wolf are instinctively smarter about this than a good many human political theorists.
