Earthseed Quotes

“A lot of people seem to believe in a big-daddy-God or a big-cop-God or a big-king-God. They believe in a kind of super-person. A few believe God is another word for nature. And nature turns out to mean just about anything they happen not to understand or feel in control of.
Some say God is a spirit, a force, an ultimate reality. Ask seven people what all of that means and you’ll get seven different answers. So what is God? Just another name for whatever makes you feel special and protected?”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower / Parable of the Talents / Kindred

“We give lip service to acceptance, as though acceptance were enough. Then we go on to create super-people - super-parents, super-kings, and queens, super-cops - to be our gods and to look after us - to stand between us and God. Yet God has been here all along, shaping us and being shaped by us in no particular way or in too many ways at once like an amoeba - or like a cancer. Chaos.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower / Parable of the Talents / Kindred

“Mars is a rock - cold, empty, almost airless, dead. Yet it’s heaven in a way. We can see it in the night sky, a whole other world, but too nearby, too close within the reach of the people who’ve made such a hell of life here on Earth.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower & Parable of the Talents.

“When apparent stability disintegrates, As it must— God is Change— People tend to give in To fear and depression, To need and greed. When no influence is strong enough To unify people They divide. They struggle, One against one, Group against group, For survival, position, power. They remember old hates and generate new ones, They create chaos and nurture it. They kill and kill and kill, Until they are exhausted and destroyed, Until they are conquered by outside forces, Or until one of them becomes A leader Most will follow, Or a tyrant Most fear.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

“Worship is no good without action. With action, it's only useful if it steadies you, focuses your efforts, and eases your mind”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower / Parable of the Talents / Kindred

“one way to make people afraid of you is to have a crazy side—a side of yourself or your organization that’s dangerous and unpredictable—willing to do any damned thing.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

“Human competitiveness and territoriality were often at the root of particularly horrible fashions in oppression. We human beings seem always to have found it comforting to have someone to took down on—a bottom level of fellow creatures who are very vulnerable, but who can somehow be blamed and punished for all or any troubles. We need this lowest class as much as we need equals to team with and to compete against and superiors to look to for direction and help.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

“Beware: At war Or at peace, More people die Of unenlightened self-interest Than of any other disease.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

“The stars are free.” She shrugs. “I’d rather have the city lights back myself, the sooner the better. But we can afford the stars.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

“And all without making anyone look down.” “Look down…?” “Into the abyss, Daughter.” But I wasn’t in trouble any more. Not at the moment. “You’ve just noticed the abyss,” he continued. “The adults in this community have been balancing at the edge of it for more years than you’ve been alive.” I got up, went over to him and took his hand. “It’s getting worse, Dad.” “I know.” “Maybe it’s time to look down. Time to look for some hand and foot holds before we just get pushed in.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents: Ebook Box Set

“I think people who traveled to extrasolar worlds would be on their own—far from politicians and business people, failing economies and tortured ecologies—and far from help. Well out of the shadow of their parent world.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

“We keep falling into the same ditches, you know? I mean, we learn more and more about the physical universe, more about our own bodies, more technology, but somehow, down through history, we go on building empires of one kind or another, then destroying them in one way or another. We go on having stupid wars that we justify and get passionate about, but in the end, all they do is kill huge numbers of people, maim others, impoverish still more, spread disease and hunger, and set the stage for the next war. And when we look at all of that in history, we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, that’s the way things are. That’s the way things always have been.” “It is,” Len said. “It is,” I repeated. “There seem to be solid biological reasons why we are the way we are. If there weren’t, the cycles wouldn’t keep replaying. The human species is a kind of animal, of course. But we can do something no other animal species has ever had the option to do. We can choose: We can go on building and destroying until we either destroy ourselves or destroy the ability of our world to sustain us. Or we can make something more of ourselves. We can grow up. We can leave the nest. We can fulfill the Destiny, make homes for ourselves among the stars, and become some combination of what we want to become and whatever our new environments challenge us to become. Our new worlds will remake us as we remake them. And some of the new people who emerge from all this will develop new ways to cope. They’ll have to. That will break the old cycle, even if it’s only to begin a new one, a different one.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

“Jarret’s people have been known to beat or drive out Unitarians, for goodness’ sake. Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of “heathen houses of devil-worship,” he has a simple answer: “Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

“But those dedicated to other religions, and those who are not religious at all sneer at Jarret and call him a hypocrite. They sneer, they hate him, but they also fear him. They see him for the tyrant that he is. And the thugs see him as one of them. They envy him. He is the bigger, the more successful thief, murderer, and slaver.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

“Entropy, the idea that the natural flow of heat is from something hot to something cool - not the other way - so that the universe itself is cooling down, running down, dissipating its energy.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower / Parable of the Talents / Kindred

“But, Dad, that’s like… like ignoring a fire in the living room because we’re all in the kitchen, and, besides, house fires are too scary to talk about.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents: Ebook Box Set

“I read a lot period. My favorite book of the Bible is Job. I think it says more about my father’s God in particular and gods in general than anything else I’ve ever read.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

“It shouldn’t be so easy to nudge people toward what might be their own destruction.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

“We’re becoming more and more isolated as a people. We’re sliding into undirected negative change, and what’s worse, we’re getting used to it.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

“That can be dangerous these days. On the street, people are expected to fear and hate everyone but their own kind, but with all of us armed and watchful, people stared, but they let us alone. Our neighborhood is too small for us to play those kinds of games.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents: Ebook Box Set

“In the 2020s, when these people were sick, starving, or trying to keep warm, they had no time or energy to look beyond their own desperate situations.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

“most of us voted for Vice President Edward Jay Smith. None of us wanted an empty man like Smith in the White House, but even a man without an idea in his head is better than a man who means to lash us all back to his particular God the way Jesus lashed the money changers out of the temple.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

“We must be reeducated. We must accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, Jarret’s Crusaders as our teachers, Jarret as God’s chosen restorer of America’s greatness, and the Church of Christian America as our church. Only then will we be Christian patriots worthy to raise children.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

“coward”
― Octavia E. Butler, Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

“To get along with God, Consider the consequences of your behavior.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

“every time I understand a little more, I wonder why it’s taken me so long—why there was ever a time when I didn’t understand a thing so obvious and real and true.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

“They took us all to Arcata to the church there. Then they made us all separate. They said we were going to have new Christian American families. They said…they said you were all dead. I believed them at first, and I didn’t know what to do. But then I saw how they would lie whenever they felt like it. They would say things about us and about Acorn that were nothing but lies. Then I didn’t know what to believe.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

“I know that when she talks about God, she doesn’t mean what I mean. I’m not sure that matters. If she stays with us, obeys our rules, joins in our joys, sorrows, and celebrations, works alongside us, it doesn’t matter”
― Octavia E. Butler, Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

“I’ve seen religious passion in other people, though—love for a compassionate God, fear of an angry God, fulsome praise and desperate pleading for a God that rewards and punishes. All that makes me wonder how a belief system like Earthseed—very demanding but offering so little comfort from such an utterly indifferent God—should inspire any loyalty at all. In Earthseed, there is no promised afterlife. Earthseed’s heaven is literal, physical—other worlds circling other stars. It promises its people immortality only through their children, their work, and their memories. For the human species, immortality is something to be won by sowing Earthseed on other worlds. Its promise is not of mansions to live in, milk and honey to drink, or eternal oblivion in some vast whole of nirvana. Its promise is of hard work and brand-new possibilities, problems, challenges, and changes. Apparently, that can be surprisingly seductive to some people.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

“Indenturing indigents, young and old, is much in fashion now. The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments—the ones abolishing slavery and guaranteeing citizenship rights—still exist, but they’ve been so weakened by custom, by Congress and the various state legislatures, and by recent Supreme Court decisions that they don’t much matter. Indenturing indigents is supposed to keep them employed, teach them a trade, feed them, house them, and keep them out of trouble. In fact, it’s just one more way of getting people to work for nothing or almost nothing. Little girls are valued because they can be used in so many ways, and they can be coerced into being quick, docile, disposable labor.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents