The Dispossessed (Hainish Cycle)

The sunlights differ, but there is only one darkness.

‘break’ a custom; it’s the framework of your life with other people.

“I thought I knew what ‘realism’ was,” Keng said. She smiled, but it was not an easy smile. “How can you, if you don’t know what hope is?”

We cannot come to you. You will not let us. You do not believe in change, in chance, in evolution. You would destroy us rather than admit our reality, rather than admit that there is hope! We cannot come to you. We can only wait for you to come to us.”

“You don’t understand what time is,” he said. “You say the past is gone, the future is not real, there is no change, no hope. You think Anarres is a future that cannot be reached, as your past cannot be changed. So there is nothing but the present, this Urras, the rich, real, stable present, the moment now. And you think

Loyalty, which asserts the continuity of past and future, binding time into a whole, is the root of human strength; there is no good to be done without it.

But the choices of the social being are never made alone.

To break a promise is to deny the reality of the past; therefore it is to deny the hope of a real future.

If we let one another down, if we don’t give up our personal desires to the common good, nothing, nothing on this barren world can save us. Human solidarity is our only resource.”