It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the dynamics between individuals and the state, emphasizing that power is the only currency in political interactions.
Ursula K. Le Guin's quote suggests that individuals have limited leverage when it comes to negotiating with governmental authority. The state, in this context, is portrayed as a powerful entity that does not recognize traditional forms of negotiation or currency; its influence is rooted solely in the power it wields, which it generates and controls. This sheds light on the complexities of individual agency in the face of institutional power.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a political debate, one could reference this quote to discuss the imbalance of power between citizens and government.
More from Ursula K. Le Guin
All quotes βIn 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.
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.
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.
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.
When he found that the administrators were upset, he laughed. βDo they expect students not to be anarchists?β he said. βWhat else can the young be? When you are on the bottom, you must organize from the bottom up
Similar quotes
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Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny.
An allusion has been made to the Homestead Law. I think it worthy of consideration, and that the wild lands of the country should be distributed so that every man should have the means and opportunity of benefitting his condition.
There exists in the minds of men a tone of feeling toward women as toward slaves.
How oft, in nations gone corrupt, And by their own devices brought down to servitude, That man chooses bondage before liberty. Bondage with ease before strenuous liberty.
Truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in an emergent synthesis which reconciles the two.