It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
What you select from, in order to tell your story, is nothing less than everything. What you build up your world from, your local, intelligible rational, coherent world, is nothing less than everything. . . . . All human knowledge is local. Every life, each human life is local, is arbitrary, the infinitesimal momentary glitter of a reflection.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Our understanding of the world is based on our personal experiences and interpretations.
In this quote, Ursula K. Le Guin emphasizes the idea that each person constructs their narrative from their unique perspective and the local knowledge they possess. She argues that human understanding is inherently limited and subjective, shaped by individual experiences that may seem trivial yet contribute significantly to each person's sense of reality.
Themes
KnowledgeExperiencePerspectiveSubjectivityReality
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during a discussion about the importance of personal experience in shaping our understanding of the world.
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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