It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Suppressing ideas does not eliminate them; neglecting them is what truly stifles innovation.
Ursula K. Le Guin's quote emphasizes that actively ignoring ideas leads to their demise, rather than overt suppression. This highlights the importance of mental engagement and openness to change, suggesting that a refusal to entertain new thoughts ultimately stifles creativity and progress.
Themes
IdeasChangeSuppressingThinkingInnovation
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on creative thinking, one might say, 'As Ursula K. Le Guin noted, you can’t crush ideas by suppressing them.'
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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