QuoteProject
In our loss and fear we craved the acts of religion, the ceremonies that allow us to admit our helplessness, our dependence on the great forces we do not understand.
Ursula K. Le Guin
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote reflects the human desire for connection to something greater during times of loss and fear.

Ursula K. Le Guin's quote emphasizes how in moments of vulnerability, such as during loss and fear, people often turn to religious practices and rituals. These ceremonies serve as a way for individuals to acknowledge their own helplessness and recognize their dependence on larger, often incomprehensible forces that govern existence, promoting a sense of community and support in shared experiences.

Themes

ReligionLossFearCeremoniesHelplessnessDependence

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be used in a discussion about the role of religion in coping with grief during a community meeting.

More from Ursula K. Le Guin

It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
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. β€œDo they expect students not to be anarchists?” he said. β€œWhat else can the young be? When you are on the bottom, you must organize from the bottom up
Ursula K. Le GuinRead

Similar quotes

Daily the Negro is coming more and more to look upon law and justice, not as protecting safeguards, but as sources of humiliation and oppression. The laws are made by men who have little interest in him; they are executed by men who have absolutely no motive for treating the black people with courtesy or consideration; and, finally, the accused law-breaker is tried, not by his peers, but too often by men who would rather punish ten innocent Negroes than let one guilty one escape.
W. E. B. Du BoisRead
The truest test of independent judgment is being able to dislike someone who admires us, and to admire someone who dislikes us.
Sydney J. HarrisRead
You who let yourselves feel: enter the breathing _x000D_ That is more than your own. _x000D_ Let it brush your cheeks _x000D_ As it divides and rejoins behind you. _x000D_ _x000D_ The trees you planted in childhood have grown _x000D_ Too heavy. You cannot bring them along. _x000D_ Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.
Rainer Maria RilkeRead
Place principle above all else.
Haile SelassieRead
People of character do the right thing, not because they think it will change the world but because they refuse to be changed by the world.
Michael JosephsonRead
It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence.
Abraham LincolnRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.