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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

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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
Computer
Probability
Common
Legends
Oracular
Faith
Computers
Discrepancies
Provides
Statistical
Speak
Spirits
Loopholes
Spirit
Household
Prediction
Whole
Throughout
Ambiguity
Men
Gods
Predictions

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

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The counsel of the dead is not profitable to the living.
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I think what's happening is, it's all - fantasy, science fiction, ghosts, trolls, whatever - finally being called, being admitted to be literature. The way it used to be, before the Realists and the bloody Modernists took over.
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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.
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Those who build walls are their own prisoners.
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Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else
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If your voice is heard by more people because you've earned some kind of name and fame, your silence on an issue of urgent moral importance is even more of a betrayal. Privilege is obligation.
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We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.
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When the enemy enthusiastically embraces you, and the fellow countrymen bitterly reject you, it is hard not to wonder if you are, in fact, a traitor.
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The same old hypocrisy. Life is a fight, and the strongest wins. All civilization does is hide the blood and cover up the hate with pretty words!
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I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.
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Manipulated, one manipulates others.
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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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The misogyny that shapes every aspect of our civilization is the institutionalized form of male fear and hatred of what they have denied and therefore cannot know, cannot share: that wild country, the being of women.
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When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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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.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.
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What she needs, at least one thing she needs, is companionship. After all why should she eat? Who needs her to be alive? What we call psychosis is sometimes simply realism. But human beings can't live on realism alone.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Belief in heaven and hell is a big deal in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and some forms of doctrinaire Buddhism. For the rest of us it's simply meaningless. We don't live in order to die, we live in order to live.
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Art and Entertainment are the same thing, in that the more deeply and genuinely entertaining a work is, the better art it is. To imply that Art is something heavy and solemn and dull, and Entertainment is modest but jolly and popular, is neo-Victorian idiocy at its worst.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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But it doesn't take a thousand men to open a door, my lord. It might to keep it open.
Ursula K. Le Guin