It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
A dangerous book will always be in danger from those it threatens with the demand that they question their assumptions. They'd rather hang on to the assumptions and ban the book.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the discomfort that challenging ideas can bring, leading people to suppress knowledge that threatens their beliefs.
Ursula K. Le Guin's quote suggests that books or ideas that provoke thought and challenge existing beliefs are often seen as dangerous. Those who are unwilling to question their own assumptions may resort to censorship or banning such works rather than confronting uncomfortable truths, revealing a tendency to cling to familiar ideologies at the cost of potential growth and understanding.
Themes
KnowledgeAssumptionsCensorshipIdeasThought
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about freedom of speech at a book club meeting.
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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