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Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes

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Famous Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes

“The book itself is a curious artifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades, even centuries. It doesn't have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable.”

NeedsMindHumansLooksKindLittlesBookLightEyeLastsTechnologyCenturyMachinesComplexesDecadesHandleCuriousPleasantDevicesHuman MindEfficientNeatEphemeralCompactArtifactsOne Of A KindHuman EyesShowy
Author:Ursula K. Le Guin
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“Certainly the effort to remain unchanged, young, when the body gives so impressive a signal of change as the menopause, is gallant; but it is a stupid, self-sacrificial gallantry, better befitting a boy of twenty than a woman of forty-five or fifty. Let the athletes die young and laurel-crowned. Let the soldiers earn the Purple Hearts. Let women die old, white-crowned, with human hearts.”

GivingHumansHeartSelfBodyYoungDiesWhiteEffortBoysFiveStupidTwentiesSoldierAthleteFiftyFortyHuman HeartSignalsPurpleImpressiveLaurelsDie YoungMenopauseGallantGallantryPurple Heart
Book:Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places
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“If you deny any affinity with another person or kind of person, if you declare it to be wholly different from yourself - as men have done to women, and class has done to class, and nation has done to nation - you may hate it or deify it; but in either case you have denied its spiritual equality and its human reality. You have made it into a thing, to which the only possible relationship is a power relationship. And thus you have fatally impoverished your own reality.”

IfsMenHumansKindMayPersonsMadeDifferentDoneRealitySpiritualHateNationsClassCasesRespectEqualityDenyMade ItDeniedAffinityPower Relationships
Book:The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction
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“I believe that maturity is not an outgrowing, but a growing up: that an adult is not a dead child, but a child who survived. I believe that all the best faculties of a mature human being exist in the child. . . that one of the most deeply human, and humane, of these faculties is the power of imagination.”

BelieveHumansChildrenI BelieveImaginationHuman BeingsGrowing UpGrowingAdultsMaturityFacultyMatureSurvivedHumaneAll The BestPower Of ImaginationOutgrowing
Book:The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction
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“A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skilful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well, - this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection and of sociality as a whole.”

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Author:Ursula K. Le Guin
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“What you select from, in order to tell your story, is nothing less than everything. What you build up your world from, your local, intelligible rational, coherent world, is nothing less than everything. . . . . All human knowledge is local. Every life, each human life is local, is arbitrary, the infinitesimal momentary glitter of a reflection.”

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Author:Ursula K. Le Guin
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“What children don't understand, and can't understand until they grow up some, is how much the whole fabric and process of human society depends on everybody agreeing to ignore, most of the time, the fact that all of us are, most of the time, inadequate, incompetent, pitiful, and, in fact, naked to our enemies. None of us really has very much in the way of spiritual, moral clothing. We dress ourselves in rags. And we agree to say nothing about it. To a very large extent, it is human charity that clothes us.”

WayHumansChildrenWholeFactsSpiritualGrowsProcessMoralEnemyGrowing UpHumilityDependsClothesDressesAgreeCharityNakedClothingsFabricInadequateHuman SocietyIncompetentRagsPitiful
Author:Ursula K. Le Guin
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“We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable - but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.”

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Book:Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016, with a Journal of a WriterÕs Week
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“What she needs, at least one thing she needs, is companionship. After all why should she eat? Who needs her to be alive? What we call psychosis is sometimes simply realism. But human beings can't live on realism alone.”

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Book:The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin
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“If we can get that realistic feminine morality working for us, if we can trust ourselves and so let women think and feel that an unwanted child or an oversize family is wrong -- not ethically wrong, not against the rules, but morally wrong, all wrong, wrong like a thalidomide birth, wrong like taking a wrong step that will break your neck -- if we can get feminine and human morality out from under the yoke of a dead ethic, then maybe we'll begin to get somewhere on the road that leads to survival.”

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Book:Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places
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“Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing -- instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.”

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Author:Ursula K. Le Guin
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