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

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

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Would you really like to live in a society where you have no responsibility and no freedom, no choice, only the false option of obedience to the law, or disobedience followed by punishment? Would you really want to go live in a prison?
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Belief is the wound that knowledge heals.
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If I had to pick a hero, it would be Charles Darwin--the size of his mind, which included all that scientific curiosity and knowledge seeking, and the ability to put it all together. There is a genuine spirituality about Darwin's thinking.
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A man wants his virility regarded. A woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. [Here] one is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.
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Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books.
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Dreams take short cuts.
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I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, till you gave it back to me.
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I use a whole lot of half-assed semicolons there was one of them just now that was a semicolon after 'semicolons,' and another one after 'now.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Dragons are more dangerous, and a good deal commoner, than bears. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a real wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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I have no control over my writing. I have lots of good intentions, but no control. There's a story that wants to be told.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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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.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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No society can change the nature of existence. We can't prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A society can only relieve social suffering, unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the reality.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The desire for power feeds off itself, growing as it devours.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Before the moon I am, what a woman is, a woman of power, a woman's power, deeper than the roots of trees, deeper than the roots of islands, older than the Making, older than the moon.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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I think hard times are coming. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries, the realists of a larger reality.
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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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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Those who build walls are their own prisoners.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The great authors share their souls with us- literally.
Ursula K. Le Guin