The story - from Rumplestiltskin to War and Peace - is one of the basic tools invented by the human mind, for the purpose of gaining understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.


Ursula K. LeGuin

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There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that di...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES
The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.
KARL MARX
In most of history, societies have not been free. It's a very rare society that is free. The def...
MICHAEL NOVAK
What is the Other?" they ask.
The Other is the one who taught me whatI should be like, but not ...
PAULO COELHO
from The Lathe of Heaven Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, r...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
The battle is not physical, it is spiritual and your mind is the battleground. Keep your mind pure a...
JEANETTE CORON
PEACE IS THE OBJECTIVE TO WAR, BUT THE BLOOD RUNNETH STILL
NATALIE URQUIETA
...we see that there are two different kinds of...societies: (a) parasitic societies and (b) produci...
CARROLL QUIGLEY
Monopoly controls have been the exception in free societies; they have been the rule in closed socie...
LAWRENCE LESSIG
A simple and heart-warming fable, one might think - in which case, one would reveal oneself to be an...
J.K. ROWLING
My refusal to remove the book from the library was backed by a majority of the Board of Governors. I...
J.K. ROWLING
Most historical societies start off by trying to buy the building. We have been given the building, ...
CHARLOTTE KRUMAN
In traditional societies, we have a long legacy of men controlling the body and mind of women. Such ...
TASLIMA NASRIN
A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of p...
TIM O'BRIEN
May I never neither turn left nor turn right in my journey of life, but may I go straight to Christ ...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
When the enemy is relaxed, make them toil. When full, starve them. When settled, make them move.
SUN TZU
Before I got here, I thought that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it didn't exist, ...
JOHN GREEN
Life is the everlasting gobstopper with its complications of the starter being birth, the main cours...
GARY F EVANS...
From the Kindle Book Reflections in the Mirror of Life:
“In a slum somewhere in India
As...
THE PROPHET OF LIFE
The unfortunate thing is that, sometimes, we slip, but, fortunately, consciously or unconsciously, w...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
In Japan itself there have all along been attempts by some to obliterate the article about renunciat...
KENZABURO OE
This did not annoy Amanda for it had long been her theory that human beings were invented by water a...
TOM ROBBINS
I don't know if I have a favorite color.
KATE MIDDLETON
It's very special having a new little girl.
KATE MIDDLETON
The science of the mind can only have for its proper goal the understanding of human nature by every...
ALFRED ADLER
She said 'Over my dead body!' so I took her at her word.
DIANA WYNNE JONES
The end of the world is a strange concept. The world is always ending, and the end is always being a...
NEIL GAIMAN
History has been the history of warfare.
GODFREY REGGIO
Billions have been spent for one purpose and one purpose only: to obscure and distract from the fact...
ADAM MCKAY
It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, b...
ALEXANDER HAMILTON
Look, my friends!' he called. 'Here's a pretty hobbit-skin to wrap an elven princeling in! If it wer...
J.R.R. TOLKIEN
Orion is above the horizon now, and near it Jupiter, brighter than it will ever be ... But i expect ...
THOMAS HARRIS
There is nothing so good for the human soul as the discovery that there are ancient and flourishing ...
WALTER LIPPMANN
Of course great hotels have always been social ideas, flawless mirrors to the particular societies t...
JOAN DIDION
A man who cannot decide whether or not to pull the trigger, wages war against only himself.
DAVE FRANCIS
Why did God leave us one tale after another of wounded lives being restored? So we could be grateful...
MAX LUCADO
Kershaw did not minimise the historical role played by his insane, ideological fixations, but he did...
VOLKER ULLRICH
Food Allergies Are Not Due to Food, Rather Are Due to the Constant Contamination of That Food That Y...
THEHEALTHFOODGURU
Societies in decline have no use for visionaries.
ANAïS NIN
On the one hand, I have nothing but distaste for any kind of religious fundamentalism and the societ...
WILLIAM BLUM
Revolution is a wasteful, destructive, and inhuman engine of political change. It must be allowed to...
RICHARD J. BARNET
You’re not the only one,” he says through gritted teeth. “My twelve-year-old sister died in my...
RICK YANCEY
Hail to you gods, on that day of the great reckoning. Behold me, I have come to you, without sin, wi...
THE BOOK OF THE DEAD
When a man takes one step toward God, God takes more steps toward that man than there are sands in t...
THE WORK OF THE CHARIOT
The single most important human insight to be gained from this way of comparing societies is perhaps...
THOMAS HYLLAND ERIKSEN
The two men had a conversation. Brief, cryptic, to the point. As though they had exchanged numbers a...
ARUNDHATI ROY
Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.
MARK STRAND
The meaning of life: For centuries "man" searched for the meaning of life. On that journey, the valu...
DORIS J TORRES
Here was one with an air of high nobility such as Aragorn at times revealed, less high perhaps, yet ...
J.R.R. TOLKIEN
It's all to do with the training: you can do a lot if you're properly trained.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
Like all best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
My husband has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years, and I owe him a debt greater ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
It is easy enough to define what the Commonwealth is not. Indeed this is quite a popular pastime.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I have to be seen to be believed.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I have in sincerity pledged myself to your service, as so many of you are pledged to mine. Throughou...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I hope that tomorrow we can all, wherever we are, join in expressing our grief at Diana's loss, ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I myself prefer my New Zealand eggs for breakfast.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
The British constitution has always been puzzling and always will be.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I have behind me not only the splendid traditions and the annals of more than a thousand years but t...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
To what greater inspiration and counsel can we turn than to the imperishable truth to be found in th...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
What were once only hopes for the future have now come to pass; it is almost exactly 13 years since ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
First, I want to pay tribute to Diana myself. She was an exceptional and gifted human being. In good...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I cannot lead you into battle. I do not give you laws or administer justice but I can do something e...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts an...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
Grief is the price we pay for love.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
The upward course of a nation's history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
At its heart, engineering is about using science to find creative, practical solutions. It is a nobl...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
At Christmas, I am always struck by how the spirit of togetherness lies also at the heart of the Chr...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
For many, Christmas is also a time for coming together. But for others, service will come first.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
The lessons from the peace process are clear; whatever life throws at us, our individual responses w...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your s...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
Therefore I am sure that this, my Coronation, is not the symbol of a power and a splendor that are g...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
We lost the American colonies because we lacked the statesmanship to know the right time and the man...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
Madam President, speaking here in Dublin Castle it is impossible to ignore the weight of history, as...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
These wretched babies don't come until they are ready.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I know of no single formula for success. But over the years I have observed that some attributes of ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
The events that I have attended to mark my Diamond Jubilee have been a humbling experience. It has t...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognise how precious is the peace ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
Like all the best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
No one who knew Diana will ever forget her. Millions of others who never met her, but felt they knew...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I have been aware all the time that my peoples, spread far and wide throughout every continent and o...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I didn't tell him that I'd put his awful stories in boxes and stacked them on a shelf at the back of...
LAUREN WOLK
The answer isn't more time but a greater awareness of the time we have.
CRAIG GROESCHEL
In a world in which the common rule which binds and regulates what the general masses feel is underm...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
It has taken centuries to create the freest, fairest, most prosperous societies in the world, and th...
ANN COULTER
Only the strong will remain, all the weak will be consumed by fire
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA
She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer ...
ANGELA CARTER
The profound ability to use aural and written language has enabled our species to collectively explo...
KATHERINE VUCICEVIC
No, sweet one. See, my precious: if we has it, then we can escape, even from Him, eh? Perhaps we gro...
J.R.R. TOLKIEN
There is a great fear that unstable states and post-war societies provide an ideal breeding ground f...
ALBRECHT SCHNABEL
Sacrifice, which is the passion of great souls, has never been the law of societies.
HENRI FREDERIC AMIEL
This is definitely one step, but there are many questions that have been raised by the trial that ha...
PAMELA DIX
A great future starts with what you can see
SOTONYE ANGA
Millions of people acknowledge today that they do not know the meaning of life.
JAMES C. DOBSON
Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by t...
MARSHALL MCLUHAN
Solomon Northup is one of the most remarkable people I've ever encountered in my life; one of th...
CHIWETEL EJIOFOR
There have been some unbelievable stories, great drama and great individual and team performances. B...
CRAIG LITTLEPAGE
Put your mind to it and you will do it. This is how the impossible become possible
SOTONYE ANGA
We'll sort of get over the marriage first and then maybe look at the kids. But obviously we want...
PRINCE WILLIAM

More Ursula K. LeGuin

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, make...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
Love doesn't just sit there like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made n...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
The quality of the will to power is, precisely, growth. Achievement is its cancellation. To be, the ...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
He is far too intelligent to become really cerebral.
URSULA K. LEGUIN
Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of o...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
Virginity is now a mere preamble or waiting room to be got out of as soon as possible; it is without...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
You thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought, once. So did we all. An...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.
URSULA K. LEGUIN
Legends of prediction are common throughout the whole Household of Man. Gods speak, spirits speak, c...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
If you deny any affinity with another person or kind of person, if you declare it to be wholly diffe...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.
URSULA K. LEGUIN
What the hell is nostalgia doing in a science-fiction film? With the whole universe and all the futu...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
URSULA K. LEGUIN
In so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, th...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
The pornography of violence of course far exceeds, in volume and general acceptance, sexual pornogra...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself trans...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
The world is in balance <...>. To light a candle is to cast a shadow.
URSULA K. LEGUIN
The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.
URSULA K. LEGUIN
It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.
URSULA K. LEGUIN
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.
URSULA K. LEGUIN
The preservation of life seems to be rather a slogan than a genuine goal of the anti-abortion forces...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
If we can get that realistic feminine morality working for us, if we can trust ourselves and so let ...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
Reason is a faculty far larger than mere objective force. When either the political or the scientifi...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
The misogyny that shapes every aspect of our civilization is the institutionalized form of male fear...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
from The Lathe of Heaven Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, r...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
I certainly wasn't happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was give...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
As great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we a...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
The only thing that makes life possible is a permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what co...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what come...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
URSULA K. LEGUIN
There's a good deal in common between the mind's eye and the TV screen, and though the TV set has al...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end
URSULA K. LEGUIN
In the tale, in the telling, we are all one blood. Take the tale in your teeth, then, and bite till ...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made ...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
A Woman is home caring for her children! even if she can't. Trapped in this well-built trap, A Woman...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps chan...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
To me the female principle is, or at least historically has been, basically anarchic. It values orde...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing -- instead of a...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end.
URSULA K. LEGUIN
I certainly wasn't happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was give...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
It is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception and compassion and hope.
URSULA K. LEGUIN
Love does not just sit there, like a stone; it had to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
To oppose something is to maintain it.
URSULA K. LEGUIN
If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close a wor...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
The power of the harasser, the abuser, the rapist depends above all on the silence of women.
URSULA K. LEGUIN
When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep
URSULA K. LEGUIN
The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself.
URSULA K. LEGUIN
What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice
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The important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins t...
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Success is somebody else's failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most ...
URSULA K. LEGUIN
Morning comes whether you set the alarm or not.
URSULA K. LEGUIN
To hear, one must be silent
URSULA K. LEGUIN
The creative adult is the child who has survived.
URSULA K. LEGUIN
There are no right answers to wrong questions.
URSULA K. LEGUIN
To light a candle is to cast a shadow.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
It had never occurred to me before that music and thinking are so much alike. In fact you could say ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
If you want your writing to be taken seriously, don't marry and have kids, and above all, don...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
As great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we a...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
To oppose something is to maintain it.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
In so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, th...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The artist deals in what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in wo...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
There are no right answers to wrong questions.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world, and exiles me from it.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust every...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, m...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, make...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
It is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception and compassion and hope.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps chan...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close a...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed:
name’s the mother
of the ten thousand things...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
What is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where th...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
They have nothing to give. They have no power of making. All their power is to darken and destroy. T...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
He tried to read an elementary economics text; it bored him past endurance, it was like listening to...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
It is what it looks like and is called. A jail. it is not a front for something else, not a facade, ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
And though I came to forget or regret all I have ever done, yet I would remember that once I saw the...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I do not care what comes after; I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering hap...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I believe that maturity is not an outgrowing, but a growing up: that an adult is not a dead child, b...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Morning comes whether you set the alarm or not.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what come...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
No man, no power, can bind the action of wizardry or still the words of power. For they are the very...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The creative adult is the child who has survived.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
He is far too intelligent to become really cerebral.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
When in the Land of Property think like a propertarian. Dress like one, eat like one, act like one, ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I never knew anybody . . . who found life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you lea...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Not even need and love can defeat fate...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The best I can say, it's like this. A man's in his skin, see, like a nut in its shell ... It's hard ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words a...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Those whom heaven helps we call the sons of heaven. They do not learn this by learning. They do not ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I do try to separate my personal activism - showing up at a demonstration or something - from what I...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
"In innocence there is no strength against evil," said Sparrowhawk, a little wryly. "But there is ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I don't write tracts, I write novels. I'm not a preacher, I'm a fiction writer.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
But it doesn't take a thousand men to open a door, my lord."

"It might to keep it open.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
We're each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?
URSULA K. LE GUIN
War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to �...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk's flight on th...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to �...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
He knew now, and the knowledge was hard, that his task had never been to undo what he had done, but ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
You thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought, once. So did we all. An...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, till you gave it back to me.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I bid your voice be dumb until the day you find a word worth speaking.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
He was born to be alone, a damned cold intellectual, an egoist.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Independence was as far as his mind could reach. Yet I think his mind groped further, towards what h...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I use your love as a man burns a candle, burns it away, to light his steps.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I was with you at the beginning of your journey. It is right that I should follow you to its end.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
But I can't say that gratitude was my motive for infringing on the Law of Cultural Embargo. I was no...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
To see that your life is a story while you're in the middle of living it may be a help to living it ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering hap...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
'The fact is,' I said, 'that you're unable, or unwilling, to believe in the fact that I believe in ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!' 'Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of a...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
He explained to Atro that he now understood why the army was organized as it was. It was indeed quit...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
He had been taught as a child that Urras was a festering mass of inequity, iniquity, and waste. But ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Encyclopedia Planaria, in forty-four volumes, is not portable, and after all, what is entirely r...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Ged saw all these things from outside and apart, alone, and his heart was very heavy in him, though ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
To light a candle is to cast a shadow...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Some dreams tell us what we wish to believe. Some dreams tell us what we fear. Some dreams are of wh...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what come...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words eve...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
If one believes that words are acts, as I do, then one must hold writers responsible for what their ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go t...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Ai taught me a Terran game played on squares with little stones, called go, an excellent difficult g...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Se...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Life rises out of death, death rises out of life; in being opposite they yearn to each other, they g...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
My world, my Earth is a ruin. A planet spoiled by the human species. We multiplied and fought and go...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The explorer who will not come back or send back his ships to tell his tale is not an explorer, only...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
There are talking dogs all over the place, unbelievably boring they are, on and on and on about sex ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Oh, Hank," Susan whispered, "their wings are furry."

"Oh, James," Harriet whispered, "the...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful functio...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the
darkness, and they do not come back. The place they...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Oh, never and forever aren't for mortals, love. But we won't be parted till I know it's right that w...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
A forest ecology is a delicate one. If the forest perishes, its fauna may go with it. The Athshean w...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
This was the way he had to go; he had no choice. He had never had any choice. He was only a dreamer.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Would you give up the craft of your hands, and the passion of your heart, and the hunger of your min...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The little Otak was hiding in the rafters of the house, as it did when strangers entered. There it s...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I always wondered why the makers leave housekeeping and cooking out of their tales. Isn't it what al...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at th...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I always wondered why the makers leave housekeeping and cooking out of their tales. Isn't it what al...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Dead anarchists make martyrs, you know, and keep living for centuries. But absent ones can be forgot...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
We scarcely know how much of our pleasure and interest in life comes to us through our eyes until we...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
In our loss and fear we craved the acts of religion, the ceremonies that allow us to admit our helpl...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Which is better off, a lizard basking in the sun or a philosopher?
URSULA K. LE GUIN
My dogs have barked at a beggar tonight and he proves a prince of starlight.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
... “Dangerous!” Vea laughed radiantly. “What an utterly marvellous compliment! Why am I dange...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Anyhow they’re always exceptions. But most women, their only relationship to a man is having. Eith...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
We have nothing but our freedom. We have nothing to give you but your own freedom. We have no law bu...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Do you see, Arren, how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
While we read a novel, we are insane—bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't the...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
An Odonian undertook monogamy just as he might undertake a joint enterprise in production, a ballet ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The prisoner is the jailer's jailer.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
There's a point, around the age of twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
What good is power when you're too wise to use it?
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Where does your soul go, when you die in Hell?
URSULA K. LE GUIN
But need alone is not enough to set power free: there must be knowledge.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Belief is the wound that knowledge heals.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
A promise is a direction taken, a self-limitation of choice. As Odo pointed out, if no direction is ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
To use the enemy's weapon is to play the enemy's game...speak the truth and hear the truth.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
We all have forests on our minds. Forests unexplored, unending. Each one of us gets lost in the fore...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
In many college English courses the words “myth” and “symbol” are given a tremendous charge ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
To oppose something is to maintain it... You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; the...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
In feudal times the aristocracy had sent their sons to university, conferring superiority on the ins...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicor...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
His words cost him so much, she thought, not like hers that just came dancing out of the air and wen...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
On the blank leaf glued to the inner back cover I drew the double curve within the circle, and black...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Death and life are the same thing-like the two sides of my hand, the palm and the back. And still th...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
There must be darkness to see the stars.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The experience was disagreeable. I began to feel like an atheist praying.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The fish in the creek said nothing. Fish never do. Few people know what fish think about injustice, ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel......
URSULA K. LE GUIN
A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice
URSULA K. LE GUIN