What is the use trying to describe the flowing of a river at any one moment, and then at the next moment, and then at the next, and the next, and the next? You wear out. You say: There is a great river, and it flows through this land, and we have named it History.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes

They can send death at once, but life is slower...

— Ursula K. Le Guin

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

And though I came to forget or regret all I have ever done, yet would I remember that once I saw the dragons aloft on the wind at sunset above the western isles; and I would be content.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Sometimes one’s very angry and preaches, but I know that to clinch a point is to close it. To leave the reader free to decide what your work means, that’s the real art; it makes the work inexhaustible.

— Ursula K. Le Guin
Real

All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show us how. If we don’t, our lives get made up for us by other people .

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Statesmen remember things selectively.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

The desire for power feeds off itself, growing as it devours.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Ignorant power is a bane!

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Belief in heaven and hell is a big deal in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and some forms of doctrinaire Buddhism. For the rest of us it’s simply meaningless. We don’t live in order to die, we live in order to live.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

The old knowledge had been difficult but not distressing. It had been all paradox and myth, and it had made sense. The new knowledge was all fact and reason, and it made no sense.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

A man who doesn’t detest a bad government is a fool. And if there were such a thing as a good government on earth, it would be a great joy to serve it.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

What is love of one’s country; is it hate of one’s uncountry? Then it’s not a good thing.

— Ursula K. Le Guin
Country

The question is always the same with a dragon: will he talk with you or will he eat you?

— Ursula K. Le Guin

It is hard, I found, to be called traitor. Strange how hard it is, for it’s an easy name to call another man.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

The future has become uninhabitable. Such hopelessness can arise, I think, only from an inability to face the present, to live in the present, to live as a responsible being among other beings in this sacred world here and now, which is all we have, and all we need, to found our hope upon.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Hope is a slow business.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Elegance is a small price to pay for enlightenment, and I was glad to pay it.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Where there’s property, there’s theft.

— Ursula K. Le Guin
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