I’ll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination.

The purpose of a thought-experiment, as the term was used by Schrödinger and other physicists, is not to predict the future – indeed Schrödinger most famous thought experiment goes to show that the “future,” on...

«I am tired,» he said. «I did a lot today. That is, I did something. The only thing I have ever done. I pressed a button. It took the entire will power, the accumulated strength...

We have nothing but our freedom. We have nothing to give you but your own freedom. We have no law but the single principle of mutual aid between individuals. We have no government but the...

Legends of prediction are common throughout the whole Household of Man. Gods speak, spirits speak, computers speak. Oracular ambiguity or statistical probability provides loopholes, and discrepancies are expunged by Faith.

The light is the left hand of darkness

Gradually the healing took place, seeming as it always does that it wasn’t taking place.

Belief is the wound that knowledge heals.

…you play the instrument you have.

I know perfectly well he’s a god, too. But what I think is he’ll be much godlier after he’s dead.

…You have knowledge, and I have skill, and between us we have…””We have the Ring of Erreth-Akbe.””Yes, that. But I thought also of another thing between us. Call it trust… That is one of its...

It is yin and yang. Light is the left hand of darkness… how did it go? Light, dark. Fear, courage. Cold, warmth. Female, male. It is yourself, Therem. Both and one. A shadow on snow.

Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together.

They have nothing to give. They have no power of making. All their power is to darken and destroy. They cannot leave this place; they are this place; and it should be left to them....

Age and illness made one a dualist

She’ll die.’ ‘Aye. That’s a consequence of being alive.

But it doesn’t take a thousand men to open a door, my lord.””It might to keep it open.

Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero.

Oh, Hank,” Susan whispered, “their wings are furry.””Oh, James,” Harriet whispered, “their hands are kind.

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.

I believe that all novels, … deal with character, and that it is to express character – not to preach doctrines, sing songs, or celebrate the glories of the British Empire, that the form of...

You know there’s always prejudice in a revolutionary movement.

Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.

It could be a thousand things, distractions, worries;but very often I think what keeps a writer from finding the words is that she grasps at them too soon, hurries, grabs. She doesn’t wait for the...

The artist deals with what cannot be said in words.The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.

What is love of one’s country; is it hate of one’s uncountry? Then it’s not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That’s a good thing, but one musn’t make a virtue of it, or...

He copulated with a number of girls, but copulation was not the joy it ought to be. It was a mere relief of need, like evacuating, and he felt ashamed of it afterward because it...

Where does your soul go, when you die in Hell?

None were left now to unname, and yet how close I felt to them when I saw one of them swim or fly or trot or crawl across my way or over my skin, or...

A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt.

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

Dead anarchists make martyrs, you know, and keep living for centuries. But absent ones can be forgotten.

Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of our tribe is the men’s language. Of course women learn it. We’re not dumb. If you can tell...

But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.

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.

To light a candle is to cast a shadow…

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.

The best I can say, it’s like this. A man’s in his skin, see, like a nut in its shell … It’s hard and strong, that shell, and it’s all full of him. Full of...

But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard’s power...

Not even need and love can defeat fate…

To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws.

I can never get used to the fact, though I know it, that women are born cynics. Men have to learn cynicism. Infant girls could teach it to them.

To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be...

There are souls, he thought, whose umbilicus has never been cut. They never got weaned from the universe. They do not understand death as an enemy; they look forward to rotting and turning into humus.

I don’t know which I should fear more . . . death or life. I wish I could be done with fear.

I have told the story I was asked to tell. I have closed it, as so many stories close, with a joining of two people. What is one man’s and one woman’s love and desire,...

My species has a great many good reasons for making war, though none of them is as good as the reason for not making war.

Why are my sons followed thus by darkness?’…’Because they were born in the house of flesh, therefore death follows at their heels.

Collaborative workshops and writers’ peer groups hadn’t been invented when I was young. They’re a wonderful invention. They put the writer into a community of people all working at the same art, the kind of...

The duty of the individual is to accept no rule, to be the initiator of his own acts, to be responsible. Only if he does so will the society live, and change, and adapt, and...