Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes about War

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Even the best weapon is an unhappy tool, hateful to living things. So the follower of the Way stays away from it. Weapons are unhappy tools, not chosen by thoughtful people, to be used only when there is no choice, and

Even the best weapon is an unhappy tool, hateful to living things. So the follower of the Way stays away from it. Weapons are unhappy tools, not chosen by thoughtful people, to be used only when there is no choice, and with a calm, still mind, without enjoyment. To enjoy using weapons is to enjoy killing people, and to enjoy killing people is to lose your share in the common good. It is right that the murder of many people be mourned and lamented. It is right that a victor in war be received with funeral ceremonies.

Ursula K. Le Guin

War, Thoughtful, People

Ursula K. Le Guin, Jerome P. Seaton (2009). “Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way”, p.48, Shambhala Publications

If civilization has an opposite, it is war. Of these two things, you have either one, or the other. Not both.

Ursula K. Le Guin

War, Opposites, Civilization

Sci-fi uses the images that sf - starting with H.G. Wells - made familiar: space travel, aliens, galactic wars and federations, time machines, et cetera, taking them literally, not caring if they are possible or even plausible. It has no interest in or relation to real science or technology. It's fantasy in space suits. Spectacle. Wizards with lasers. Kids with ray guns. I've written both, but I have to say I respect science fiction enough that I wince when people call it sci-fi.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Real, War, Kids

Primitiveness and civilization are degrees of the same thing. If civilization has an opposite, it is war.

Ursula K. Le Guin

War, Opposites, Civilization

Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.77, Penguin

If civilization has an opposite, it is war.

Ursula K. Le Guin

War, Opposites, Civilization

Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.77, Penguin

Without war there are no heroes. What harm would that be? Oh, Lavinia, what a woman's question that is.

Ursula K. Le Guin

War, Hero, Lavinia

Ursula K. Le Guin (2008). “Lavinia”, p.132, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I always wondered why the makers leave housekeeping and cooking out of their tales. Isn't it what all the great wars and battles are fought for -- so that at day's end a family may eat together in a peaceful house?

Ursula K. Le Guin

War, House, Cooking

I know that nobody who hasn't been in battle or under attack can know what war is. But even in terms of being safe at home, it's also true that many Americans who think they know what being at war is, don't. Including, of course, George W. Bush and his people. They don't have a clue.

Ursula K. Le Guin

War, Home, Thinking

Source: www.guernicamag.com

Growing up during World War II certainly affected my whole view of life, but I hardly know how, it goes so deep. What's hard to explain now is that, though we were never invaded, and bombed only once and ineffectively on the coast of Oregon, everybody in the country was in that war. Everything we did was influenced by it - eating, traveling, dressing, thinking - everything in daily life.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Country, Growing Up, War

Source: www.guernicamag.com

Fantasy is a literature particularly useful for embodying and examining the real difference between good and evil. In an America where our reality may seem degraded to posturing patriotism and self-righteous brutality, imaginative literature continues to question what heroism is, to examine the roots of power, and to offer moral alternatives. Imagination is the instrument of ethics. There are many metaphors besides battle, many choices besides war, and most ways of doing good do not, in fact, involve killing anybody. Fanstasy is good at thinking about those other ways.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Real, War, Thinking

Men who fight wars in winter don't live till spring.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Spring, War, Fighting

Ursula K. Le Guin (2016). “Worlds of Exile and Illusion: Three Complete Novels of the Hainish Series in One Volume--Rocannon's World; Planet of Exile; City of Illusions”, p.175, Macmillan

...fiction is made out of the writer's experience, his whole life from infancy on, everything he's thought and done and seen and read and dreamed. But experience isn't something you go and get - it's a gift, and the only prerequisite for receiving it is that you be open to it. A closed soul can have the most immense adventures, go through a civil war or a trip to the moon, and have nothing to show for all that "experience"; whereas the open soul can do wonders with nothing.

Ursula K. Le Guin

War, Adventure, Moon