The Dispossessed

by Ursula K. Le Guin

But why hate? Hate’s not functional; why are we taught it?

You can go home again, the General Temporal Theory asserts, so long as you understand that home is a place where you have never been.

It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on.

The explorer who will not come back or send back his ships to tell his tale is not an explorer, only an adventurer; and his sons are born in exile.

“What else can the young be? When you are on the bottom, you must organise from the bottom up!”

‘To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws.’ The Social Organism.”

You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them.

‘Government: The legal use of power to maintain and extend power.’—Replace

The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.”

You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”

The thing about working with time, instead of against it, he thought, is that it is not wasted. Even pain counts.

You cannot have anything…. And least of all can you have the present—unless you accept with it the past and the future. Not only the past but also the future, not only the future but also the past! Because they are real: only their reality makes the present real.