Octavia Butler - Parable of the Sower (1993)

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The Destiny of Earthseed
Is to take root among the stars.

Octavia Butler
In order to rise From its own ashes A phoenix First Must Burn.

Octavia Butler
Create no images of God.
Accept the images
that God has provided.
They are everywhere,
in everything.
... The universe
is God's self-portrait.

Octavia Butler
All struggles
Are essentially
Power struggles.
Who will rule,
Who will lead,
Who will define,
refine,
confine,
design,
Who will dominate.
All struggles
Are essentially
Power struggles,
And most
are no more intellectual
than two rams
knocking their heads together.

Octavia Butler
Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation.

Octavia Butler
Intelligence is ongoing, individual adaptability. Adaptations that an intelligent species may make in a single generation, other species make over many generations of selective breeding and selective dying. Yet intelligence is demanding. If it is misdirected by accident or by intent, it can foster its own orgies of breeding and dying.

Octavia Butler
Your God doesn't care about you at all, Travis said.
All the more reason to care about myself and others.

Octavia Butler
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 superperson. 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.

Octavia Butler
All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
Is Change.

God
Is Change.

Octavia Butler
I realize I don't know very much. None of us knows very much. But we can all learn more. Then we can teach one another. We can stop denying reality or hoping it will go away by magic.

Octavia Butler
Dad decided not to vote for Donner after all. He didn't vote for anyone. He said politicians turned his stomach.

Octavia Butler
When it comes to strangers with guns, I told her, I think suspicion is more likely to keep you alive than trust.

Octavia Butler
A victim of God may,
Through learning adaption,
Become a partner of God,
A victim of God may,
Through forethought and planning,
Become a shaper of God.
Or a victim of God may,
Through shortsightedness and fear,
Remain God's victim,
God's plaything,
God's prey.

Octavia Butler
From what I've read, I said to him, the world goes crazy every three or four decades. The trick is to survive until it goes sane again.

Octavia Butler
Drowning people
Sometimes die
Fighting their rescuers.

Octavia Butler
To get along with God, Consider the consequences of your behavior. Earthseed: The Books of the Living

Octavia Butler
Embrace diversity
Unite—
or be divided,
robbed,
ruled,
killed
By those who see you as prey.
Embrace diversity
Or be destroyed.

Octavia Butler
Freedom is dangerous, Cory, but it's precious, too. You can't just throw it away or let it slip away. You can't sell it for bread and pottage.

Octavia Butler