Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes
Would you really like to live in a society where you have no responsibility and no freedom, no choice, only the false option of obedience to the law, or disobedience followed by punishment? Would you really want to go live in a prison?
Le Guin, Ursula K. The Dispossessed. Harper & Row, 1974.
In Russia at the time, serfs were little better off than slaves. Not only did they have to obey their landlords in all things, but any who advocated disobedience on their part were beaten and sent to Siberia. Exile to the Siberian Gulags was not an invention of the Communists of the 20th century although they used that punishment in unprecedented numbers. It was used by the Czars and the Empress.
Urging a presidential veto of a tough ethics law prohibiting unethical behavior on the part of government officials:
Referring to a voter initiative on the 1988 Oregon ballot which would outlaw smoking in almost all public places:
Socialism in its then pure form had the state owning and controlling all the major assets of the nation. In this sense it was contradictory to individual freedom and hence democracy. However, in the years after Tocqueville’s quotation and the industrial revolution, socialism has gradually moved away from state ownership and operations of all institutions and resources. Democracy has tended to adopt a more regulatory view to control the excesses of unbridled capitalism. The range of democratic nations by the 21st century encompassed differences but some were described as “social democracies” and had some state ownership but were basically capitalistic economies. Even the self-described Communist nations had become heavily capitalistic albeit with less political freedom. At the same time, even the United States—the epitome of 21st century capitalism, owned and controlled a few of the resources and means of production and tended to regulate the others—a substantial difference from the American democracy which Tocqueville studied.
Ursula Kroeber Le Guin was an American author best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the Earthsea fantasy series. She was first published in 1959, and her literary career spanned nearly sixty years, yielding more than twenty novels and over a hundred short stories, in addition to poetry, literary criticism, translations, and children's books. Frequently described as an author of science fiction, Le Guin has also been called a "major voice in American Letters". Le Guin herself said she would prefer to be known as an "American novelist".
