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I can never get used to the fact, though I know it, that women are born cynics. Men have to learn cynicism. Infant girls could teach it to them.

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
Men
Fact
Learn
Born
Cynics
Girl
Infant
Facts
Cynicism
Used
Girls
Women
Teach
Never
Though

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A wrong that cannot be repaired must be transcended.
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All knowledge is partial, infinitesimally partial. Reason is a net thrown out into an ocean. What truth it brings in is a fragment, a glimpse, a scintillation of the whole truth.
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No, I don't mean love, when I say patriotism. I mean fear. The fear of the other. And its expressions are political, not poetical: hate, rivalry, aggression.
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You must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act.
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Prose writers are interested mostly in life and commas.
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Success is somebody else's failure.
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What the brain does by itself is infinitely more fascinating and complex than any response it can make to chemical stimulation.
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I have never heard a dancer asking for advice about how to stay focused on her footwork, or a painter complaining about the dull day-to-day task of painting. What task worth doing isn't worth daily effort? Do you think Michelangelo was having fun the whole time he was on his back painting the Sistine Chapel's ceiling?
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There's no way to use power for good.
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Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge) by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets) and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.
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When the genuine myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message. You must change your life.
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What goes too long unchanged destroys itself.
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What is love of one's country is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing.
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Life goes on, even if two-headed and glowing faintly in the dark.
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The borderline between prose and poetry is one of those fog-shrouded literary minefields where the wary explorer gets blown to bits before ever seeing anything clearly. It is full of barbed wire and the stumps of dead opinions.
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He knew now, and the knowledge was hard, that his task had never been to undo what he had done, but to finish what he had begun.
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Men who fight wars in winter don't live till spring.
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The important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of prayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little.
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You fear them because you fear death, and rightly: for death is terrible and must be feared,' the mage said...'And life is also a terrible thing,' Ged said, 'and must be feared and praised.
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If civilization has an opposite, it is war.
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