Ursula K. Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)

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It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

Ursula K. Le Guin
When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

Ursula K. Le Guin
This, at least, is the accepted explanation, though like most economic explanations it seems, under certain lights, to omit the main point.

Ursula K. Le Guin
A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. On Winter they will not exist. One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.

Ursula K. Le Guin
He was a hard shrewd jovial politician, whose acts of kindness served his interest and whose interest was himself. His type is panhuman. I had met him on Earth, and on Hain, and on Ollul. I expect to meet him in Hell.

Ursula K. Le Guin
I thought, shivering, that there are things that outweigh comfort, unless one is an old woman or a cat.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Almost anything carried to its logical extreme becomes depressing, if not carcinogenic.

Ursula K. Le Guin
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.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Elegance is a small price to pay for enlightenment, and I was glad to pay it.

Ursula K. Le Guin
We in the Handdara don't want answers. It's hard to avoid them, but we try to.
Faxe, I don't think I understand.
Well, we come here to the Fastnesses mostly to learn what questions not to ask.
But you're the Answerers!
You don't see, Genry, why we perfected and practice Foretelling?
No—
To exhibit the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question.

Ursula K. Le Guin
To be an atheist is to maintain God. His existence or his nonexistence, it amounts to much the same, on the plane of proof. Thus proof is a word not often used among the Handdarata, who have chosen not to treat God as a fact, subject either to proof or to belief: and they have broken the circle, and go free.
To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.

Ursula K. Le Guin
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.

Ursula K. Le Guin
I certainly wasn't happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can't earn, and can't keep, and often don't even recognize at the time; I mean joy.

Ursula K. Le Guin
I talk about the gods; I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.

Ursula K. Le Guin
A man can trust his luck, but a society can't; and cultural change, like random mutation, may make things chancier. So they have gone very slowly. At any one point in their history a hasty observer would say that all technological progress and diffusion had ceased. Yet it never has. Compare the torrent and the glacier. Both get where they are going.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets); and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Mr. Ai, we've seen the same events with different eyes; I wrongly thought they'd seem the same to us.

Ursula K. Le Guin
One voice, speaking truth is a greater force than fleets and armies, given time; plenty of time.

Ursula K. Le Guin
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.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Everything gives way before the recurring torment and festivity of passion.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.

Ursula K. Le Guin
But it doesn't take a thousand men to open a door, my lord." "It might to keep it open.

Ursula K. Le Guin
If at moments the facts seem to alter with an altered voice, why then you can choose the fact you like best; yet none of them are false, and it is all one story.

Ursula K. Le Guin
If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion....But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Legends of prediction are common throughout the whole Household of Man. God speaks, spirits speak, computers speak. Oracular ambiguity or statistical probability provides loopholes, and discrepancies are expunged by Faith.

Ursula K. Le Guin
It is not human to be without shame and without desire.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Darkness is only in the mortal eye, that thinks it sees, but sees not.

Ursula K. Le Guin
The mission I am on overrides all personal debts and loyalties.
If so, said the stranger with fierce certainty, it is an immoral mission.

Ursula K. Le Guin
A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt.

Ursula K. Le Guin
I forgot, being too interested myself, that he's a king, and does not see things rationally, but as a king.

Ursula K. Le Guin