It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
We broke the world to make it whole.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the paradox of destruction leading to creation and healing.
Ursula K. Le Guin's quote, 'We broke the world to make it whole,' suggests that through the act of breaking down existing structures or systems, one can pave the way for renewal and healing. It highlights the idea that sometimes, in order to achieve completeness or wholeness, one must first confront and dismantle the imperfections and flaws within the world. This process, while painful and destructive, can ultimately lead to a more profound understanding and a better future.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on environmental sustainability, one might use this quote to emphasize the necessity of drastic measures for long-term restoration.
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
What is food to one man is bitter poison to others.
What do we know but that we face one another in this place?
When God intends great mercy for his people, the first thing he doth is to set them a praying.
LET A MAN THINK AND CARE ever so little about God, he does not therefore exist without God. God is here with him, upholding, warming, delighting, teaching him-making life a good thing to him. God gives him himself, though the man knows it not.
And I walk out of space Into an overgrown garden of values, And tear up seeming stability And self-comprehension of causes. And your, infinity, textbook I read by myself, without people - Leafless, savage medical book, A problem book of gigantic radicals.
Remember God more often than you breathe.