The Dispossessed (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

His gentleness was uncompromising; because he would not compete for dominance he was indomitable.

He was not working. He was being worked.

Life on Anarres had sealed him, closed off his soul; the waters of life welled all around him, and yet he could not drink.

You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them.

“You know, I don’t agree,” he said to long-faced Vokep, an agricultural chemist travelling to Abbenay. “I think men mostly have to learn to be anarchists. Women don’t have to learn.” Vokep shook his head grimly. “It’s the kids,” he said. “Having babies. Makes ’em propertarians. They won’t let go.” He sighed. “Touch and go, brother, that’s the rule.

You can go home again, the General Temporal Theory asserts, so long as you understand that home is a place where you have never been.

Wasn’t it immoral to do work you didn’t enjoy?

It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on.

“Just that. Listen, wasn’t it Odo who said that where there’s property there’s theft?” “ ‘To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws.’