Insightful quotes from the science fiction classic THE DISPOSSESSED, by Ursula K. Le Guin: His father loved him, but he could not show him what freedom is, that recognition of each person's solitude which alone transcends it. Gvarab was old enough that she often wandered and maundered. Attendance at her lectures was small and uneven. She soon picked out the thin boy with big ears as her one constant auditor. She began to lecture for him. The light, steady, intelligent eyes met hers, steadied her, woke her, she flashed to brilliance, regained the vision lost. She soared, and the other students in the room looked up confused or startled, even scared if they had the wits to be scared. Gvarab saw a much larger universe than most people were capable of seeing, and it made them blink. So many of his problems were of a kind other people did not understand that he had got used to working them out for himself, in silence. His gentleness was uncompromising; because he would not compete for dominance, he was indomitable. He was appalled by the examination system, when it was explained to him; he could not imagine a greater deterrent to the natural wish to learn than this pattern [at schools] of cramming in information and disgorging it at demand. "It's always easier not to think for oneself. Find a nice safe hierarchy to settle in. Don't make changes, don't risk disapproval, don't upset your [bosses]. It's always easiest to let yourself be governed." It was now clear to him, and he would have thought it folly to think otherwise, that his wretched years in this city had all been part of his present great happiness, because they had led up to it, prepared him for it. Everything that had happened to him was part of what was happening to him now. The false starts and futilities of the past years proved themselves to be the groundwork, foundations, laid in the dark but well laid. On these, methodically and carefully but with a deftness and certainty that seemed nothing of his own but a knowledge working through him, using him as its vehicle, he built up the beautiful steadfast structure of the Principles of Simultaneity. "Here [where you live] you see the jewels, there [where I live] you see the eyes. And in the eyes you see the splendor, the splendor of the human spirit. Because our men and women are free -- possessing nothing, they are free. And you the possessors are possessed. You are all in jail. Each alone, solitary, with a heap of what he owns. You live in prison, die in prison. It is all I can see in your eyes -- the wall, the wall!" "There's a point, around age twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities. Or at least accept them with resignation." On Anarres he had chosen, in defiance of the expectations of his society, to do the work he was individually called to do. To do it was to rebel: to risk the self for the sake of society. Like all power-seekers, Pae was amazingly short-sighted. There was a trivial, abortive quality to his mind: it lacked depth, affect, imagination. "The means are the end." "It isn't changing around from place to place that keeps you lively. It's getting time on your side. Working with it, not against it." The enduring, the reliable, is a promise made by the human mind. "We always say that. You said it -- you should have refused to go to Rolny. I said it as soon as I got to Elbos: I'm a free man, I didn't have to come here! ... We always think it, and say it, but we don't do it. We keep our initiative tucked away safe in our mind, like a room where we can come and say, 'I don't have to do anything, I make my own choices, I'm free.' And then we leave the little room in our mind, and go where we're posted, and stay till we're reposted." "We're ashamed to say we've refused a posting. That the social conscience completely dominates the individual conscience, instead of striking a balance with it. We don't cooperate -- we obey. We fear being outcast, being called lazy, dysfunctional... We fear our neighbor's opinion more than we respect our own freedom of choice. You don't believe me, Tak, but try, just try stepping over the line, just in imagination, and see how you feel. You realize then what Tirin is, and why he's a wreck, a lost soul. He is a criminal! We have created crime, just as the propertarians did. We force a man outside the sphere of our approval, and then condemn him for it. We've made laws, laws of conventional behavior, built walls all around ourselves, and we can't see them, because they're part of our thinking." "Those who build walls are their own prisoners." For after all, he thought now, lying in the warmth of Takver's sleep, it was the joy they were both after -- the completeness of being. If you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home.
To give other people the opportunity to read these quotes if they so desire. Maybe one or more of them will somehow prove very insightful and helpful to someone who hasn't read the book. And maybe one or more people will decide to read the book whereas otherwise they wouldn't have.
