Lucía > Recent Status Updates

the heaviest single factor in one’s life, is whether one’s born male or female. (...) it determines one’s expectations, activities, outlook, ethics, manners—almost everything. (...) it’s extremely hard to eliminate the innate differences from the learned ones. Even where women participate equally with men in the society, they still after all do all the childbearing, and so most of the child-rearing...

what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one’s country; is it hate of one’s uncountry? Then it’s not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That’s a good thing, but one mustn’t make a virtue of it, or a profession...

It is a terrible thing, this kindness that human beings do not lose. Terrible, because when we are finally naked in the dark and cold, it is all we have. We who are so rich, so full of strength, we end up with that small change. We have nothing else to give.

To oppose something is to maintain it.
They say here «all roads lead to Mishnory». To be sure, if you turn your back on Mishnory and walk away from it, you are still on the Mishnory road. To oppose vulgarity is inevitably to be vulgar. You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk another road.

The unexpected is what makes life possible.

in this imprecision is its precisest meaning.

the sure, quick, and lasting way to make people into a nation: war. (...)
The only other means of mobilizing people rapidly and entirely is with a new religion; none was handy; he would make do with war.

One of the most dangerous is the implication that civilization, being artificial, is unnatural: that it is the opposite of primitiveness... Of course there is no veneer, the process is one of growth, and primitiveness and civilization are degrees of the same thing. If civilization has an opposite, it is war. Of those two things, you have either one, or the other. Not both.

He wanted his hearers to be frightened and angry. His themes were not pride and love at all, though he used the words perpetually; as he used them they meant self-praise and hate.

An enemy, in Karhide, is not a stranger, an invader. The stranger who comes unknown is a guest. Your enemy is your neighbour.

I take my friends where I find them, (...) but I no longer look to keep them long.

The unknown, (...) the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of thought. Unproof is the ground of action. (...) what is known? What is sure, predictable, unevitable—the one certain thing you know concerning your future, and mine?
That we shall die.
Yes. (...) The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.

«You don’t see yet, Genry, why we perfected the practice of Foretelling?»
«No—»
«To exhibit the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question.»

«I’m not sure. I’m exceedingly ignorant—» (...)
«I am honored!» he said. «I’ve lived here three years, but I haven’t yet acquired enough ignorance to be worth mentioning.»

when action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

only fear rules men. Nothing else works.

One voice speaking truth is a greater force than fleets and armies, given time; plenty of time;

I was taught as a child on my homeworld that truth is a matter of the imagination. The soundest fact may fail or prevail on the style of its telling: like that singular organic jewel of our seas, which grows brighter as one woman wears it and, worn by another, dulls and goes to dust. Facts are no more solid, coherent, round, and real than pearls are. But both are sensitive.

There’s always more than one way toward the truth.

He was staked now totally on one belief: that an honest man cannot be cheated, that truth, if the game be played through right to the end, will lead to truth.

you will be fooled if they want to fool you, and there is no way yo can prevent it. If you ask no questions (...) lest the answer be a lie, then the lie prevails entirely, and nothing comes of all your journey here but silence and mockery and disgust.

Alone? It’s only in fairytales from the Time of the Cities that women ever go anywhere alone.

sólo con cambiar ligeramente de perspectiva las cosas podían ser muy diferentes. De igual modo que las personas tenemos muchas facetas, sucedía lo mismo con todo lo demás.

that alchemy of quiet malice, by which women can concoct a subtle poison from ordinary trifles

she was probably too curious about strangers to be loyal in the way girls want their girl friends to be loyal.

Ese tipo de cosas ocurren a menudo. Cuando alguien sale al extranjero, se despierta en él su propia identidad.

there are a few things,—whether in the outward world, or, to a certain depth, in the invisible sphere of thought,—few things hidden from the man who devotes himself earnestly and unreservedly to the solution of a mystery.

People always love themselves best. But in a world so interconnected that harm to one is harm to all, the best way of loving one’s self, is to love everyone else too.

The jailer is the prisoner’s prisoner.

The scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as must always invest the spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow creature, before society shall have grown corrupt enough to smile, instead of shuddering, at it.