“People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)
“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)
“What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)
“A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)
“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)
“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)
“Truth is a matter of the imagination.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)
“What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)
“There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)
“The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)
“If civilization has an opposite, it is war.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)
“To oppose something is to maintain it... You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)
“A scientist can pretend that his work isn't himself, it's merely the impersonal truth. An artist can't hide behind the truth. He can't hide anywhere.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)
“To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)
"Change is freedom, change is life. It's always easier not to think for oneself. Find a nice safe hierarchy and settle in. Don't make changes, don't risk disapproval, don't upset your syndics. It's always easiest to let yourself be governed. There's a point, around age twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities. Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I'm going to go fulfil my proper function in the social organism. I'm going to go unbuild walls."
― Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)
Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I'm going to go fulfill my proper function in the social organism. I'm going to "unbuild walls."
"Capitalism’s grow-or-die imperative stands radically at odds with ecology’s imperative of interdependence and limit. The two imperatives can no longer coexist with each other; nor can any society founded on the myth that they can be reconciled hope to survive. Either we will establish an ecological society or society will go under for everyone, irrespective of his or her status."
― Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)
"The creative adult is the child who has survived."
― Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)
"Time has two aspects. There is the arrow, the running river, without which there is no change, no progress, or direction, or creation. And there is the circle or the cycle, without which there is chaos, meaningless succession of instants, a world without clocks or seasons or promises."
― Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)
"We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings."
― Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)