It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
But it doesn't take a thousand men to open a door, my lord." "It might to keep it open.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that while it may take many efforts to maintain a status quo, sometimes only a single act is needed to initiate change.
In this quote, Ursula K. Le Guin illustrates the paradox that though one person can often spark change or open possibilities, sustaining that change requires collective effort. It highlights the distinction between the ease of initiating a new idea or venture and the difficulty of keeping it alive amidst resistance or challenges.
In practice
During a team meeting, to emphasize the importance of collective effort after a successful project launch.
It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
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.
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
Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith.
It was a good thing to have a couple of thousand people all rigid and frozen together, in the palm of one's hand.
In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.
The world isn't purposeful. It isn't ruled by reason. The world wants to play. Fashion queens have always aroused more interest than future generations and their fate.
The believer in magic and miracles reflects on how to impose a law on nature--: and, in brief, the religious cult is the outcome of this reflection.
If you're treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they're real for you whether they're real or not.
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