Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes

The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself.

What goes too long unchanged destroys itself.

Alone, no one wins freedom.

As great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception, and compassion, and hope.

Animals do neither good nor evil. They do as they must do. We may call what they do harmful or useful, but good and evil belong to us, who chose to choose what we do. [. . .] The animals need only be and do. We’re yoked, and they’re free. So to be with an animal is to know a little freedom.

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is so.

In our loss and fear we craved the acts of religion, the ceremonies that allow us to admit our helplessness, our dependence on the great forces we do not understand.

What you love, you will love. What you undertake you will complete. You are a fulfiller of hope; you are to be relied on. But seventeen years give little armor against despair…Consider, Arren. To refuse death is to refuse life.

There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.

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.

Abstractions about right and wrong, whether they are as old as Thou Shalt Not Kill or as modern as Do Your Own Thing, often serve only to confuse and weaken genuine moral decision.