Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes

Men must be either the slaves of duty, or the slaves of force.

If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies.

I am certainly an ought and not a must.

But I really believe that you don't do music because you want to, you do it because you have to.

If a motive affects me, and I am compelled to act on it because it proves to be the 'strongest' of its kind, then the thought of freedom ceases to have any meaning. How should it matter to me whether I can do a thing or not, if I am forced by the motive to do it?

What I am looking for is not happiness. I work solely because it is impossible for me to do anything else.

It is not a matter of desire, but of coercion and duty.

Duty does not consist in suffering everything, but in suffering everything for duty. Sometimes, indeed, it is our duty not to suffer.

Neither pleasure nor pain should enter as motives when one must do what must be done.

Fear guides more to their duty than gratitude; for one man who is virtuous from the love of virtue, from the obligation he thinks he lies under to the Giver of all, there are ten thousand who are good only from their apprehension of punishment.

I have free will, but not of my own choice. I have never freely chosen to have free will. I have to have free will, whether I like it or not!

For duty, duty must be done; The rule applies to everyone.

Commonplace though it may appear, this doing of one's duty embodies the highest ideal of life and character. There may be nothing heroic about it; but the common lot of men is not heroic.

Duty is seldom liked either by the doer or the object ... And why should it be? It is not often of advantage to either.

My obligation is to do the right thing. The rest is in God's hands.

If you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something about it.

Without duty, life is soft and boneless.

By definition, the big difference between mercy and justice is that mercy is never ever obligatory.

An action, to have moral worth, must be done from duty.

Duty is what goes most against the grain, because in doing that we do only what we are strictly obliged to, and are seldom much praised for it.

Filmmaking is something I have to do. It's not something I particularly want to do.

In true courage there is always an element of choice, of an ethical choice, and of anguish, and also of action and deed. There is always a flame of spirit in it, a vision of some necessity higher than oneself.

Obligation may be stretched till it is no better than a brand of slavery stamped on us when we were too young to know its meaning.

I have found nothing stronger than Necessity.

Moral obligation is to me so very strong a Stimulant, that in 9 cases out of ten it acts as a Narcotic. The Blow that should rouse, stuns me.