It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Ownership can lead to crime, as laws create boundaries that some may seek to break.
This quote by Ursula K. Le Guin suggests that the concepts of ownership and legality can inherently create conditions for crime. When individuals feel ownership, it may foster a desire to protect what they own, potentially leading to theft or conflict. Moreover, laws themselves can provoke disobedience; thus, by establishing rules, society may unintentionally encourage criminal behavior.
Themes
OwnershipCrimeLawsSocietyBoundaries
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about property laws and their implications on crime rates.
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.
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. 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
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
Similar quotes
Let but the public mind become once thoroughly corrupt, and all attempts to secure property, liberty or life, by mere force of laws written on parchment, will be as vain as to put up printed notices in an orchard to keep off the canker-worms.
Horace MannRead
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.... Do not be frightened from this inquiry from any fear of its consequences. If it ends in the belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise.
Thomas JeffersonRead
Insurrection. An unsuccessful revolution; disaffection's failure to substitute misrule for bad government.
Ambrose BierceRead
Mysticism and exaggeration go together. A mystic must not fear ridicule if he is to push all the way to the limits of humility or the limits of delight.
Milan KunderaRead
The consciousness of the past weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.
Karl MarxRead
We must take the profit out of war.
Smedley ButlerRead