245 quotes
Injustice makes the rules, and courage breaks them.
Tales from Earthsea (2001)
The more defensive a society, the more conformist.
City of Illusions (1967)
Existence is its own justification, need is right.
The Dispossessed (1974)
What goes too long unchanged destroys itself.
Tales from Earthsea (2001)
If civilization has an opposite, it is war.
The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
If they come prying they can leave curious.
Tehanu (1990)
Josef liked to read books, not pack them.
Orsinian Tales (1976)
Despair speaks evenly, in a quiet voice.
Tehanu (1990)
The First Envoy to a world always comes alone. One alien is a curiosity, two are an invasion.
The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
It takes a long time to learn to live without God, and some people never do. They would rather have a false God than none at all.
There’s people all over these parts, and maybe beyond, who think, as you said, that nobody can be wise alone. So these people try to hold to each other.
Tales from Earthsea (2001)
Favoritism, elitism, leader-worship, they crept back and cropped out everywhere. But she had never hoped to see them eradicated in her lifetime, in one generation; only Time works the great changes.
The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (1975)
My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world, and exiles me from it.
Little generals and painted gods raise armies to waste lives and goods and spoil the sacred earth.
Solitude is non-communication, the absence of others, the presence of a self sufficient to itself.
Is it the gods who set this fire in our hearts, or do we each make our fierce desire into a god?
Lavinia (2008)
What was the good working for freedom all your life and ending up without any freedom at all?
The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (1975)
Nobody had made this wilderness, and there was no evil in it and no good; it simply was.
The Eye of the Heron (1978)
We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings.
If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic.
Dancing at the Edge of the World (1989)