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Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation.

Octavia Butler

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Octavia Butler
Intelligence
Civilization
Groups
Achieve
Combining
Individual
Adaptation
Means
Ongoing
Many
Individuals
Mean
Group

More quotes by Octavia Butler

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When your rage is choking you, it is best to say nothing.
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Third, for people who aren't doing it already, take classes - they're worthwhile. Workshops or classes - a workshop is where you do actually get feedback on your work, not just something where you go and sit for a day.
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I'm me, and I'm here, and I'm writing.
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The differences you perceive between Humans-between groups of Humans-are the result of isolation and inbreeding, mutation, and adaptation to different Earth environments
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And I have this little litany of things they can do. And the first one, of course, is to write - every day, no excuses. It's so easy to make excuses. Even professional writers have days when they'd rather clean the toilet than do the writing.
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There's no narcotic like exhaustion.
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Civilization is the way one's own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.
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You are horror and beauty in rare combination.
Octavia Butler
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He was like me - a kindred spirit crazy enough to keep on trying.
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A tree Cannot grow In its parents' shadows.
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Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.
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Religion is a dangerous prod, because it can always be misused and get out of hand, but it's useful for keeping people on the straight and narrow.
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Listen, no part of me is more definitive of who I am than my brain.
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I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people.
Octavia Butler
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I wanted to write a novel that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that black people have had to live through in order to endure.
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All struggles are essentially power struggles. Who will rule? Who will lead? Who will define, refine, confine, design? Who will dominate? All struggles are essentially power struggles,and most are no more intellectual than two rams knocking their heads together.
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Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status.
Octavia Butler
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I would never have been a good scientist - my attention span was too short for that.
Octavia Butler
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A victim of God may, Through learning adaption, Become a partner of God, A victim of God may, Through forethought and planning, Become a shaper of God. Or a victim of God may, Through shortsightedness and fear, Remain God's victim, God's plaything, God's prey.
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Writing is one of the few professions in which you can psychoanalyse yourself, get rid of hostilities and frustrations in public, and get paid for it.
Octavia Butler