40+ Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes From The Fantastical World Of Sci-Fi

Ursula K. Le Guin was an American author and writer best known for her science fiction fantasy books.

She won many awards and achieved a lot of recognition all over the world. She was a feminist and wrote many essays on feminism.

She was an acclaimed and iconic author of science fiction, children’s books, poetry, and wrote many essays. She was awarded the Living Legend Medal by the Library of Congress. She wrote many books spanning over a very long career in Fantasy Fiction, sci-fi, and wrote books like “The Left Hand of Darkness', 'Evil To Take Hold', 'Cast A Shadow' and 'the Wizard of Earthsea' series. Her favorite themes were sorcery and dragons, spaceships, and planetary conflict.

Read along to find some of the best Le Guin quotes and do check our articles on [science fiction quotes] and Octavia Butler quotes.

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Ursula K. Le Guin was an iconic figure. She took great interest in children’s literature and has published many novels. Read along to find some book quotes written by her. Read these Ursula K Le Guin quotes on writing. Her works in " The Left Hand Of Darkness" helped her gain fame, plus Ursula K Le Guin quotes from the "Left Hand Of darkness" for you to enjoy.

1. “Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books.”

- Ursula K Le Guin.

2. “I write science fiction because that is what publishers call my books. Left to myself, I should call them novels.”

- Ursula K Le Guin.

3. "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 are and may become."

- Ursula K Le Guin.

4. “Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there isn’t no free rides, baby. ”

- Ursula K Le Guin.

5. “You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor anything. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood.”

- Ursula K Le Guin.

6. “[T]he status of women in a society is a pretty reliable index of the degree of civilization of that society."

- Ursula K Le Guin.

7. “What then are the uses of the imagination? — The use of it is to give you pleasure and delight.”

- Ursula K Le Guin.

8. "The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself."

- Ursula K Le Guin.

9. "To hear, one must be silent."

- Ursula K Le Guin.

10. "To be oneself is a rare thing, and a great one."

- Ursula K Le Guin.

11. “The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.”

- Ursula K Le Guin.

12. “It had never occurred to me before that music and thinking are so much alike. In fact, you could say music is another way of thinking, or maybe thinking is another kind of music.”

- Ursula K Le Guin.

13. “The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.”

- Ursula K Le Guin.

14. "The creative adult is the child who has survived."

- Ursula K Le Guin.

15. "Injustice makes the rules, and courage breaks them."

- Ursula K Le Guin.

16. "Do nothing because it is righteous or praiseworthy or noble to do so; do nothing because it seems good to do so; do only that which you must do and which you cannot do in any other way."

- Ursula K Le Guin.

17. "No darkness lasts forever. And even there, there are stars."

- Ursula K Le Guin.

18. "We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable - but then, so did the divine right of kings...Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words."

- Ursula K Le Guin.

19. "You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit..."

- Ursula K Le Guin.

Sci-Fi is a genre that is based on scientific phenomena that are not completely proved by conventional science. Most of Ursula K Le Guin’s novels are in this genre. Read along to find some fantasy and science fiction quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin .

20. “Too many imaginative babies were going out with the bathwater. Too many critics and teachers ignored – were ignorant of – any kind of fiction but realism.”

- Ursula K Le Guin.

21. “The use of imaginative fiction is to deepen your understanding of your world, and your fellow men, and your own feelings, and your destiny.”

- Ursula K Le Guin.

22. “The art of one's own time tends to be formidable...because we have to learn how and where to take hold of it, what response is being asked of us, before we can get involved.”

- Ursula K Le Guin.

23. "If you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy. The pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled."

- Ursula K Le Guin.

24. "What goes too long unchanged destroys itself."

- Ursula K Le Guin.

25. "There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories."

- Ursula K Le Guin.

26. "What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?"

- Ursula K Le Guin.

27. "When the genuine myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message. You must change your life."

- Ursula K Le Guin.

28. "It's a rare gift, to know where you need to be before you've been to all the places you don't need to be."

- Ursula K Le Guin.

Fantasy is an imagination full of crazy impossible things. if you feel like you belong nowhere Ursula K Le Guin might have some fantasy and science fiction quotes from the 'Left Hand Of darkness' for you.

29. "I didn't see why everybody in heroic fantasy had to be white [...] It didn't even make sense."

- Ursula K Le Guin.

30. “I doubt that imagination can be suppressed.”

- Ursula K Le Guin.

31. “I believe that maturity is not an outgrowing, but a growing up...that one of the most deeply human, and humane, of these faculties is the power of imagination.”

- Ursula K Le Guin.

32. “People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.”

- Ursula K Le Guin.

33. “My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world, and exiles me from it.”

- Ursula K Le Guin.

34. “Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”

- Ursula K Le Guin.

35. “At this point, realism is perhaps the least adequate means of understanding or portraying the incredible realities of our existence.”

- Ursula K Le Guin.

36. "The question is always the same with a dragon: will he talk with you or will he eat you."

- Ursula K Le Guin.

37. "Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I'm going to go fulfill my proper function in the social organism. I'm going to unbuild walls."

- Ursula K Le Guin.

38. "To see that your life is a story while you're in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well."

- Ursula K Le Guin.

39. “As great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception, and compassion, and hope.”

- Ursula K Le Guin.

40. “Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one.”

- Ursula K Le Guin.

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for 40+ Ursula K Le Guin quotes then why not take a look at Philip K Dick quotes, or Margaret Atwood quotes.

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