Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes

You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit or, it is nowhere.

Ursula K. Le Guin

• Revolution

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Quotes to Explore

• We know what the birth of a revolution looks like: A student stands before a tank. A fruit seller sets himself on fire. A line of monks link arms in a human chain. Crowds surge, soldiers fire, gusts of rage pull down the monuments of tyrants, and maybe, sometimes, justice rises from the flames.

  

  Nancy Gibbs
  • Justice
  • Fire
  • Revolution

• The modern tradition is the tradition of revolt. The French Revolution is still our model today: history is violent change, and this change goes by the name of progress. I do not know whether these notions really apply to art.

  

  Octavio Paz
  • Art
  • History
  • Today

• We have confirmed something we only knew in theory, namely that revolution, in which uncontrolled and uncontrollable forces operate imperiously, is blind and destructive, grandiose and cruel.

  

  Federica Montseny
  • Revolution
  • Theory
  • Blind

• Let us not be so naive as to think that revolution is just a matter of social or economic discontent.

  

  Ferdinand Marcos
  • Think
  • Revolution
  • Matter

• As in any technological revolution, there will be winners and losers. On balance, everyone will come out ahead, although there will be particular companies that will not be able to cope with a new environment.

  

  Ralph Merkle
  • Environment
  • Balance
  • Revolution

• Roosevelt was the one who had the vision to change our policy from isolationism to world leadership. That was a terrific revolution. Our country's never been the same since.

  

  W. Averell Harriman
  • World
  • Country
  • Change

• We are redefining and we are restating our socialism in terms of the scientific revolution.

  

  Harold Wilson
  • Revolution
  • Socialism
  • Our

• Despite a certain amount of rhetoric, such as 'the second American Revolution,' there is a fair consensus about which events in the affairs of a people can rightly be called revolutions. It is also clear that such revolutions are proper objects of study for the historian.

  

  Ian Hacking
  • People
  • American
  • Study

• People always think they're in the middle of a revolution while they tend not to realize the enormity of a change that has happened in the past. The telegraph was a revolution, but who looks at it that way these days? The telegraph sped up the transportation of messages over long distances by a huge factor.

  

  Ha-Joon Chang
  • People
  • Up
  • Long

• You can have a revolution wherever you like, except in a government office; even were the world to come to an end, you'd have to destroy the universe first and then government offices.

  

  Karel Capek
  • World
  • Government
  • Universe

• America's present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration.

  

  Warren G. Harding
  • America
  • Present
  • Politics

• Mubarak's regime is dead and finished. People will not go back to this. This is a farce being propagated by the Muslim Brotherhood to say that this revolution was supported by the remnants of the Mubarak regime. They have gone against the whole Egyptian society, and this is why they were removed.

  

  Naguib Sawiris
  • People
  • Why
  • Society

• Ralph Miliband was a socialist intellectual of great integrity. He belonged to a generation of socialists formed by the Russian revolution and the Second World War, a generation that dominated left-wing politics for almost a century.

  

  Tariq Ali
  • World
  • Great
  • War

• Communications devices were always used to effect change, to effect revolution. Telephone, telegraph - these all seemed like very big enhancements at the time.

  

  Gary Shteyngart
  • Time
  • Change
  • Revolution

• Every revolution has its counterrevolution - that is a sign the revolution is for real.

  

  C. Wright Mills
  • Real
  • Revolution
  • Sign

• The English have all the material requisites for the revolution. What they lack is the spirit of generalization and revolutionary ardour.

  

  Karl Marx
  • English
  • Spirit
  • Revolution

• There doesn't seem to be any other way of creating the next green revolution without GMOs.

  

  E. O. Wilson
  • Revolution
  • Green
  • Creating

• Adam Smith's huge failure was the fact that he did not foresee the industrial revolution.

  

  P. J. O'Rourke
  • Failure
  • Revolution

• At school, up to the age of sixteen, I found history boring, for we were studying the Industrial Revolution, which was all about Acts, Trade Unions and the factory system, and I wanted to know about people, because it is people who make history.

  

  Alison Weir
  • People
  • Up
  • School

• Kelso and Adler's book could start a revolution.

  

  Caspar Weinberger
  • Revolution

• Things appear different from every different plane from which you look at them, and when a person standing on flat earth asks a person standing on top of a mountain, "Do you also believe something?" the person cannot tell much. The questioner must come to the top of the mountain and see. There can be no link of conversation between them until that time.

  

  Hazrat Inayat Khan
  • Things
  • Conversation
  • Plane

• We are not here to earn riches with a bow. The wolf does not think of fine things, only that his pack is strong and no other wolf dares to cross his path. That is enough.

  

  Conn Iggulden
  • Strong
  • Path
  • Wolf

• Do you remember when you found out you wouldn't live forever? People don't talk about this, but everybody had to go through it because you're not born with that knowledge.

  

  David Cronenberg
  • People
  • Live
  • Remember

• You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit or, it is nowhere.

  

  Ursula K. Le Guin
  • Revolution