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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.

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
Moral
Abstraction
Wrong
Genuine
Whether
Thou
Often
Serve
Right
Morality
Abstractions
Thing
Kill
Weaken
Modern
Shalt
Decision
Confuse

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He had grown up in a country run by politicians who sent the pilots to man the bombers to kill the babies to make the world safer for children to grow up in.
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I think the mystery of art lies in this, that artists’ relationship is essentially with their work — not with power, not with profit, not with themselves, not even with their audience.
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The airport bookstore did not sell books, only bestsellers, which Sita Dulip cannot read without risking a severe systemic reaction.
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Owning is owing, having is hoarding.
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Science fiction is not prescriptive it is descriptive.
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Sleeping people are so remote.... Right here, but out of communication. That's what strikes humans as uncanny about sleep. Its utter privacy. The sleeper turns his back on everyone.
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To claim power over what you do not understand is not wise, nor is the end of it likely to be good.
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If you want to know all about the sea ... and ask the sea itself, what does it say? Grumble grumble swish swish. It is too busy being itself to know anything about itself.
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In innocence there is no strength against evil, said Sparrowhawk, a little wryly. But there is strength in it 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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There is no information about corporations. There is only disinformation.
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Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero.
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I do not care what comes after I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning.
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Little mirrors were attached to the front of their cars, at which they glanced to see where they had been then they stared ahead again. I had thought that only beetles had this delusion of Progress.
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There are no right answers to wrong questions.
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Anyhow they’re always exceptions. But most women, their only relationship to a man is having. Either owning or being owned.
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Secondhand experience breaks down a block from the car lot.
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You are all in jail. Each alone, solitary, with a heap of what he owns. You live in prison, die in prison. It is all I can see in your eyes - the wall, the wall!
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To me the female principle is, or at least historically has been, basically anarchic. It values order without constraint, rule by custom not by force. It has been the male who enforces order, who constructs power structures, who makes, enforces, and breaks laws.
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To be whole is to be part true voyage is return.
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