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

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

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We of Es Toch tell a little myth, which says that in the beginning the Creator told a great lie. For there was nothing at all, but the Creator spoke, saying, It exists. And behold, in order that the lie of God might be God's truth, the universe at once began to exist.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Absolute freedom is absolute responsibility.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Now perhaps an excessive dread of overpopulation--overcrowding--reflects not an outward reality, but an inward state of mind. If you feel overcrowded when you're not, what does that mean? Maybe that you're afraid of human contact--of being close to people, of being touched.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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I don't believe that a writer 'gets' (takes into the head) an 'idea' (some sort of mental object) 'from' somewhere, and then turns it into words, and writes them on paper. At least in my experience, it doesn't work that way. The stuff has to be transformed into oneself, it has to be composted, before it can grow into a story.
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What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
Ursula K. Le Guin
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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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If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Even in the obscure vast history of a planet the time it takes to make a forest counts. It takes a while. And not every planet can do it it is no common effect, that tangling of the sun's first cool light in the shadow and complexity of innumberable wind-stirred branches.
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?
Ursula K. Le Guin
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You must come to terms with your wholeself. the wholeness which exceeds all our virtue and all our vice.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The law of evolution is that the strongest survives.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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I know that nobody who hasn't been in battle or under attack can know what war is. But even in terms of being safe at home, it's also true that many Americans who think they know what being at war is, don't. Including, of course, George W. Bush and his people. They don't have a clue.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Any artist must expect to work amid the total, rational indifference of everybody else to their work, for years, perhaps for life.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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It's not a weapon or a woman can make a man, or magery either, or any power, anything but himself.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Where there's property, there's theft.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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This is. And thou art. There is no safety. There is no end. The word must be heard in silence. There must be darkness to see the stars. The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Even in merely reading a fairytale, we must let go our daylight convictions and trust ourselves to be guided by dark figures, in silence and when we come back, it may be very hard to describe where we have been.
Ursula K. Le Guin