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You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change.

Ursula K. Le Guin

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Ursula K. Le Guin
Age: 88 †
Born: 1929
Born: October 21
Died: 2018
Died: January 22
Author
Feminist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Translator
Writer
Berkeley
California
Ursula Kroeber
Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
Ideas
Think
Thinking
Suppressing
Refusing
Ignoring
Crush
Change

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

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There are very real differences between science fiction and realistic fiction, between horror and fantasy, between romance and mystery. Differences in writing them, in reading them, in criticizing them. Vive les différences! They're what gives each genre its singular flavor and savor, its particular interest for the reader - and the writer.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Do nothing because it is righteous or praiseworthy or noble to do so do nothing because it seems good to do so do only that which you must do and which you cannot do in any other way.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The wise needn't ask, the fool asks in vain.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Art is craft: all art is always and essentially a work of craft: but in the true work of art, before the craft and after it, is some essential durable core of being, which is what the craft works on, and shows, and sets free. The statue in the stone. How does the artist find that, see it, before it's visible? That is a real question.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men's eyes.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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I've got some gift for languages. You follow your gift. But Latin's not easy.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The reason literacy is important is that literature is the operating instructions. The best manual we have. The most useful guide to the country we're visiting, life.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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I came into science fiction at a very good time, when the doors were getting thrown open to all kinds of more experimental writing, more literary writing, riskier writing. It wasn't all imitation Heinlein or Asimov. And of course, women were creeping in, infiltrating. Infesting the premises.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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I have decided that the trouble with print is, it never changes its mind.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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If one believes that words are acts, as I do, then one must hold writers responsible for what their words do.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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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.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The quality of the will to power is, precisely, growth. Achievement is its cancellation. To be, the will to power must increase with each fulfillment, making the fulfillment only a step to a further one. The vaster the power gained the vaster the appetite for more.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Literacy is so you can read the operating instructions.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The use of imaginative fiction is to deepen your understanding of your world, and your fellow men, and your own feelings, and your destiny.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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A story rises from the springs of creation, from the pure will to be it tells itself I takes its own course, finds its own way, its own words and the writer's job is to be its medium.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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There are two kinds of knowledge, local and universal.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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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.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Legends of prediction are common throughout the whole Household of Man. Gods speak, spirits speak, computers speak. Oracular ambiguity or statistical probability provides loopholes, and discrepancies are expunged by Faith.
Ursula K. Le Guin