It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
He had grown up in a country run by politicians who sent the pilots to man the bombers to kill the babies to make the world safer for children to grow up in.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote critiques the paradox of using violence to protect innocence.
Ursula K. Le Guin's quote reflects on the irony and moral conflict of justifying acts of violence in the name of security and safety for future generations. It highlights how political decisions can lead to devastating consequences, often under the guise of protecting the vulnerable, and calls into question the morality behind such actions.
Themes
ViolencePoliticsInnocenceParadoxMorality
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the ethics of war at a community event.
More from Ursula K. Le Guin
All quotes →In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find - if it's a good novel - that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have changed a little... But it's very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
Reason is a faculty far larger than mere objective force. When either the political or the scientific discourse announces itself as the voice of reason, it is playing God, and should be spanked and stood in the corner.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
When he found that the administrators were upset, he laughed. “Do they expect students not to be anarchists?” he said. “What else can the young be? When you are on the bottom, you must organize from the bottom up
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
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