Ursula K. Le Guin quotes - page 9

Obsessed with tricking the girl, he had fallen into the trap he laid for her. Bitterly he recognised that he was always believing his own lies, caught in nets he had elaborately woven. (Ursula K. Le Guin)
There is not much good spending twelve hours a day in a black hole in the ground all your life long if there's nothing there, no secret, no treasure, nothing hidden. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
Like all power seekers, Pae was amazingly shortsighted. There was a trivial, abortive quality to his mind, it lacked depth, affect, imagination. It was, in fact, a primitive instrument. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
Go to bed; tired is stupid. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
Indeed, until she had met Lev at school, it had not occurred to her that anyone might prefer to speak a plain fact rather than a lie that sounded well. People said what suited their purposes, when they were serious; and when they weren't serious, they talked without meaning anything at all. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
What we're after is to remind ourselves that we didn't come to Anarres for safety, but for freedom. If we must all agree, all work together, we're no better than a machine. If an individual can't work in solidarity with his fellows, it's his duty to work alone. His duty and his right. We have been denying people that right. We've been saying, more and more often, you must work with the others, you must accept the rule of the majority. But any rule is tyranny. The duty of the individual is to accept no rule, to be the initiator of his own acts, to be responsible. Only if he does so will the society live, and change, and adapt, and survive. We are not subjects of a State founded upon law, but members of a society founded upon revolution. Revolution is our obligation: our hope of evolution. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
As she stumbled forward she cried out in her mind, which was as dark, as shaken as the subterranean vault, "Forgive me. O my Masters, O unnamed ones, most ancient ones, forgive me, forgive me!” There was no answer. There had never been an answer. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
When we've agreed that something ought to be done, or not done, we get very stubborn. And when that meets up with another stubbornness, it can make a kind of war, a struggle of ideas, the only kind of war anybody ever wins. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
The juniper-scented liquor had volatilized his thoughts; he should be thinking that madness caused this man to call himself a king, but was thinking rather that kingship had driven this man mad. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
What would that be, a world without war? It would be the real world. Peace was the true life, the life of working and learning and bringing up children to work and learn. War, which devoured work, learning, and children, was the denial of reality. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
They prevented men from doing anything. But they did nothing themselves. They did not rule, they only blighted. (Ursula K. Le Guin)
The First Envoy to a world always comes alone. One alien is a curiosity, two are an invasion. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
Nobody had made this wilderness, and there was no evil in it and no good; it simply was. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
The politics of reality,” Shevek repeated. He looked at Oiie and said, "That is a curious phrase for a physicist to use.” "Not at all. The politician and the physicist both deal with things as they are, with real forces, the basic laws of the world.” "You put your petty miserable ‘laws' to protect wealth, your ‘forces' of guns and bombs, in the same sentence with the law of entropy and the force of gravity? I had thought better of your mind, Demaere! View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
They say Mars absolves the warrior from the crimes of war, but those who were not the warriors, those for whom the war was said to be fought, even though they never wanted it to be fought, who absolves them? View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
No granite is so hard as hatred and no clay so cold as cruelty. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
He felt that sense of being necessary which is the burden and reward of parenthood. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
After a lifetime of living on hope because there is nothing but hope, one loses the taste for victory. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
And I wondered, not for the first time, what patriotism is, what the love of country truly consists of, how that yearning loyalty that had shaken my friend's voice arises, and how so real a love can become, too often, so foolish and vile a bigotry. Where does it go wrong? View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
If I don't speak truth I can't seek truth. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
Coercion is the least efficient means of obtaining order. (Ursula K. Le Guin)
Why should he remember her? Why should she remember him? She had other things to think about. She was a grown woman. She had to face life. Even if all life had to show her was a locked door, and behind the locked door, no room. View quote
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. And the truth is that as a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do... View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
Favoritism, elitism, leader-worship, they crept back and cropped out everywhere. But she had never hoped to see them eradicated in her lifetime, in one generation; only Time works the great changes. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
Shelley was kicked out of Oxford-I think the story is unauthenticated, but who cares-because he painted a sign on the end wall of a dead-end alley: THIS WAY TO HEAVEN. I feel that every now and then his sign needs repainting. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin