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I Doubt That The Imagination Can Be Suppressed. If You Truly Eradicated It In A Child, He Would Grow Up To Be An Eggplant.
-Ursula K. Le Guin
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I Doubt That The

Ursula K. Le Guin
...
I Doubt That The Imagination Can Be Suppressed. If You Truly Eradicated It In A Child, He Would Grow Up To Be An Eggplant.

Understanding the Quote: "i doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. if you truly eradicated..."

This quote by Ursula K. Le Guin reflects deeply on the theme of children. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Children, Growing Up, Eggplant, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Ursula K. Le Guin interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin is celebrated for insightful thoughts on children and growing up. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Children
Growing Up
Eggplant
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Hardly Anybody Ever Writes Anything Nice About Introverts. Extroverts Rule. This Is Rather Odd When You Realise That About Nineteen Writers Out Of Twenty Are Introverts. We Are Been Taught To Be Ashamed Of Not Being 'outgoing'. But A Writer's Job Is Ingoing.
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Virginity Is Now A Mere Preamble Or Waiting Room To Be Got Out Of As Soon As Possible; It Is Without Significance.
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Translation Is Entirely Mysterious. Increasingly I Have Felt That The Art Of Writing Is Itself Translating, Or More Like Translating Than It Is Like Anything Else. What Is The Other Text, The Original? I Have No Answer. I Suppose It Is The Source, The Deep Sea Where Ideas Swim, And One Catches Them In Nets Of Words And Swings Them Shining Into The Boat... Where In This Metaphor They Die And Get Canned And Eaten In Sandwiches.
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Century
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Bed
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Excess
Body
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Book
Men
Doors
The Borderline Between Prose And Poetry Is One Of Those Fog-shrouded Literary Minefields Where The Wary Explorer Gets Blown To Bits Before Ever Seeing Anything Clearly. It Is Full Of Barbed Wire And The Stumps Of Dead Opinions.
Prose And Poetry
Fog
Wire
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Mean
What If
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Journey
Cells
Starting Over
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Children
Reading
Men
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Hurt
Law
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Jobs
Spring
Writing
Even A Poet Cannot Get Everything Right.
Poet
One Man May As Easily Destroy, As Govern: Be King Or Anti-king.
Kings
Men
May
True Understanding Is The Spur Of Genius
Understanding
Mentor
Spurs
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Betrayal
Silence
Speak
Sometimes You Must Go Against The Wheel's Turn.
Wheels
Sometimes
Turns
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War
Adventure
Moon
Great Self-destruction Follows Upon Unfounded Fear.
Self
Self Destruction
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Inspirational
Dark
Light
Age And Illness Made One A Dualist
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Illness
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Eye
Jail
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Writing
Marketing
All Knowledge Is Local, All Truth Is Partial. No Truth Can Make Another Truth Untrue. All Knowledge Is Part Of The Whole Knowledge. Once You Have Seen The Larger Pattern, You Cannot Go Back To Seeing The Part As The Whole.
Patterns
Truth Is
Whole
Belief Is The Wound That Knowledge Heals.
Belief
Thrive
Heal
Jungians Such As Joseph Campbell Have Generalised Such Journeys Into A Set Of Archetypal Events And Images. Though They Can Be Useful In Criticism, I Mistrust Them As Fatally Reductive. “ah, The Night Sea Voyage!” We Cry, Feeling That We Have Understood Something Important — But We’ve Merely Recognised It. Until We Are Actually On That Voyage, We Have Understood Nothing.
Night
Journey
Sea
A Writer Either Speaks To Adults And Bores Kids, Or Speaks To Kids And Upsets Adults.
Writing
Kids
Upset
Hope Is A Slow Business.
Hope
If I Had To Pick A Hero, It Would Be Charles Darwin--the Size Of His Mind, Which Included All That Scientific Curiosity And Knowledge Seeking, And The Ability To Put It All Together. There Is A Genuine Spirituality About Darwin's Thinking.
Hero
Thinking
Curiosity
The Only Thing That Makes Life Possible Is Permanent, Intolerable Uncertainty; Not Knowing What Comes Next.
Life
Business
Future
Our Roots Are In The Dark; The Earth Is Our Country. Why Did We Look Up For Blessing -- Instead Of Around, And Down? What Hope We Have Lies There. Not In The Sky Full Of Orbiting Spy-eyes And Weaponry, But In The Earth We Have Looked Down Upon. Not From Above, But From Below. Not In The Light That Blinds, But In The Dark That Nourishes, Where Human Beings Grow Human Souls.
Country
Lying
Eye
Manhood Is Patience. Mastery Is Nine Time Patience
Mastery
Nine
Time Patience
I Went To The Springs While The Sun Was Still Up, And Sitting On A Rocky Outcrop Above The Cave Mouth I Watched The Light Grow Reddish Across The Misty Pools, And Listened To The Troubled Voice Of The Water. After A While I Moved Farther Up The Hill, Where I Could Hear Birds Singing Near And Far In The Silence Of The Trees. The Presence Of The Trees Was Very Strong...the Big Oaks Stood So Many, So Massive In Their Other Life, In Their Deep, Rooted Silence: The Awe Of Them Came On Me, The Religion.
Strong
Spring
Light
I Never Knew Anybody . . . Who Found Life Simple. I Think A Life Or A Time Looks Simple When You Leave Out The Details.
Simple
Thinking
Details
For A Fiction Writer, A Storyteller, The World Is Full Of Stories, And When A Story Is There, It's There, And You Just Reach Up And Pick It.
Fiction
Stories
World
This Is. And Thou Art. There Is No Safety. There Is No End. The Word Must Be Heard In Silence. There Must Be Darkness To See The Stars. The Dance Is Always Danced Above The Hollow Place, Above The Terrible Abyss.
Art
Stars
Safety
The Hunger Of A Dragon Is Slow To Wake, But Hard To Sate.
Dragons
Hunger
Hard
Almost Everything Is Double Like That For Adolescents; Their Lies Are True And Their Truths Are Lies, And Their Hearts Are Broken By The World. They Gyre And Fall; They See Through Everything, And Are Blind.
Lying
Fall
Heart
Little Mirrors Were Attached To The Front Of Their Cars, At Which They Glanced To See Where They Had Been; Then They Stared Ahead Again. I Had Thought That Only Beetles Had This Delusion Of Progress.
Science
Mirrors
Car
No Society Can Change The Nature Of Existence. We Can't Prevent Suffering. This Pain And That Pain, Yes, But Not Pain. A Society Can Only Relieve Social Suffering, Unnecessary Suffering. The Rest Remains. The Root, The Reality.
Pain
Reality
Roots
Science Fiction Properly Conceived, Like All Serious Fiction, However Funny, Is A Way Of Trying To Describe What Is In Fact Going On, What People Actually Do And Feel, How People Relate To Everything Else In This Vast Sack, This Belly Of The Universe, This Womb Of Things To Be And Tomb Of Things That Were, This Unending Story.
People
Trying
Way
And He Began To See The Truth, That Ged Had Neither Lost Nor Won But, Naming The Shadow Of His Death With His Own Name, Had Made Himself Whole: A Man Who, Knowing His Whole True Self, Cannot Be Used Or Possessed By Any Power Other Than Himself, And Whose Life Therefore Is Lived For Life's Sake And Never In The Service Of Ruin, Or Pain, Or Hatred, Or The Dark.
Pain
Dark
Men
If You Deny Any Affinity With Another Person Or Kind Of Person, If You Declare It To Be Wholly Different From Yourself - As Men Have Done To Women, And Class Has Done To Class, And Nation Has Done To Nation - You May Hate It Or Deify It; But In Either Case You Have Denied Its Spiritual Equality And Its Human Reality. You Have Made It Into A Thing, To Which The Only Possible Relationship Is A Power Relationship. And Thus You Have Fatally Impoverished Your Own Reality.
Spiritual
Respect
Hate
I Hope You Are Never Victims, But I Hope You Have No Power Over Other People.
People
Victim
Power Over Others
Civilized Man Says: I Am Self, I Am Master, All The Rest Is Other--outside, Below, Underneath, Subservient. I Own, I Use, I Explore, I Exploit, I Control. What I Do Is What Matters. What I Want Is What Matter Is For. I Am That I Am, And The Rest Is Women & Wilderness, To Be Used As I See Fit.
Men
What Matters
Self
The Bond Between True Lovers Is As Close As We Come To What Endures Forever.
Life
Forever
Lovers
A Panda Walks Into A Tea Room And Ordered A Salad And Ate It. Then It Pulled Out A Pistol, Shot The Man In The Next Table Dead, And Walked Out. Everyone Rushed After It, Shouting "stop! Stop! Why Did You Do That?" "becuase I Am A Panda," Said The Panda. "that's What Pandas Do. If You Don't Believe Me, Look In The Dictionary." So They Looked In The Dictionary And Sure Enough They Found Panda: Racoon-like Animal Of Asia. Eats Shoots And Leaves.
Believe
Men
Animal
Not Even Need And Love Can Defeat Fate.
Fate
And Love
Needs
Those Who Build Walls Are Their Own Prisoners. I'm Going To Go Fulfill My Proper Function In The Social Organism. I'm Going To Unbuild Walls.
Wall
Social
Function
There Is Neither Source Nor End, For All Things Are In The Center Of Time. As All The Stars May Be Reflected In A Round Raindrop Falling In The Night: So Too Do All The Stars Reflect The Raindrop. There Is Neither Darkness Nor Death, For All Things Are, In The Light Of The Moment, And Their End And Their Beginning Are One.
Stars
Fall
Night
A Man Wants His Virility Regarded. A Woman Wants Her Femininity Appreciated, However Indirect And Subtle The Indications Of Regard And Appreciation. [here] One Is Respected And Judged Only As A Human Being. It Is An Appalling Experience.
Appreciation
Men
Want
But It Doesn't Take A Thousand Men To Open A Door, My Lord." "it Might To Keep It Open.
Men
Doors
Might
When In The Land Of Property Think Like A Propertarian. Dress Like One, Eat Like One, Act Like One, Be One.
Thinking
Land
Dresses
He Was Appalled By The Examination System, When It Was Explained To Him, He Could Not Imagine A Greater Detterent To The Natural Wish To Learn Than This Pattern Of Cramming In Information And Disgorging It On Demand.
Wish
Demand
Examination
It Is Very Hard For Evil To Take Hold Of The Unconsenting Soul.
Evil
Soul
Ged
Maybe When You Meet The People You Are Supposed To Meet You Know It, Without Knowing It.
Knowing
People
Knows
What Good Is Music? None ... And That Is The Point. To The World And Its States And Armies And Factories And Leaders, Music Says, 'you Are Irrelevant'; And, Arrogant And Gentle As A God, To The Suffering Man It Says Only, 'listen.' For Being Saved Is Not The Point. Music Saves Nothing. Merciful, Uncaring, It Denies And Breaks Down All The Shelters, The Houses Men Build For Themselves, That They May See The Sky.
Army
Men
Sky
After A Long Time Spent Learning How To Write As A Woman Instead Of As An Honorary Man, I Was Able To Come Back To Earthsea And Write The Next Three Books In Another And Newer Tradition: That Of Questioning, Rather Than Accepting, The Gendering Of Power As Male.
Book
Writing
Men
It Is Not Human To Be Without Shame And Without Desire.
Desire
Shame
Humans
Gradually The Healing Took Place, Seeming As It Always Does That It Wasn't Taking Place.
Healing
Doe
Seeming
The Thing About Working With Time, Instead Of Against It, He Thought, Is That It Is Not Wasted. Even Pain Counts.
Pain
I Think What's Happening Is, It's All - Fantasy, Science Fiction, Ghosts, Trolls, Whatever - Finally Being Called, Being Admitted To Be Literature. The Way It Used To Be, Before The Realists And The Bloody Modernists Took Over.
Thinking
Way
Fiction
Darkness Is Only In The Mortal Eye, That Thinks It Sees, But Sees Not.
Eye
Thinking
Darkness
The Pornography Of Violence Of Course Far Exceeds, In Volume And General Acceptance, Sexual Pornography, In This Puritan Land Of Ours.
Acceptance
Land
Violence
You Know, I Don't Think A Lot About Why One Book Connects With Its Readers And Another Doesn't. Probably Because I Don't Want To Start Thinking, "am I Popular?" I Spent Way Too Much Time Thinking About That In High School.
Book
School
Thinking
By And Large Books Are Mankind's Best Invention.
Book
Invention
Mankind
You Can’t Crush Ideas By Suppressing Them. You Can Only Crush Them By Ignoring Them. By Refusing To Think, Refusing To Change.
Crush
Thinking
Ideas
Love Is The True Condition Of Human Life.
Love Is
Human Life
Humans
One Voice Speaking Truth Is A Greater Force Than Fleets And Armies.
Time
Army
Voice
A Writer Is A Person Who Cares What Words Mean, What They Say, How They Say It. Writers Know Words Are Their Way Towards Truth And Freedom, And So They Use Them With Care, With Thought, With Fear, With Delight. By Using Words Well They Strengthen Their Souls. Story-tellers And Poets Spend Their Lives Learning That Skill And Art Of Using Words Well. And Their Words Make The Souls Of Their Readers Stronger, Brighter, Deeper.
Art
Writing
Mean
Belief In Heaven And Hell Is A Big Deal In Judaism, Christianity, And Islam, And Some Forms Of Doctrinaire Buddhism. For The Rest Of Us It's Simply Meaningless. We Don't Live In Order To Die, We Live In Order To Live.
Buddhism
Order
Heaven
To Know There Is A Choice Is To Have To Make The Choice: Change Or Stay: River Or Rock.
Rocks
Rivers
Choices
This Is The Treason Of The Artist: A Refusal To Admit The Banality Of Evil And The Terrible Boredom Of Pain.
Pain
Artist
Evil
Sometimes A God Comes.... He Brings A New Way To Do A Thing, Or A New Thing To Be Done. A New Kind Of Singing, Or A New Kind Of Death. He Brings This Across The Bridge Between The Dream-time And The World-time. When He Has Done This, It Is Done. You Cannot Take Things That Exist In The World And Try To Drive Them Back Into The Dream, To Hold Them Inside The Dream With Walls And Pretenses. That Is Insanity. What Is, Is. There Is No Use Pretending, Now, That We Do Not Know How To Kill One Another.
Dream
Wall
Bridges
The Machine Conceals The Machinations.
Machines
A Child Free From The Guilt Of Ownership And The Burden Of Economic Competition Will Grow Up With The Will To Do What Needs Doing And The Capacity For Joy In Doing It. It Is Useless Work That Darkens The Heart. The Delight Of The Nursing Mother, Of The Scholar, Of The Successful Hunter, Of The Good Cook, Of The Skilful Maker, Of Anyone Doing Needed Work And Doing It Well, - This Durable Joy Is Perhaps The Deepest Source Of Human Affection And Of Sociality As A Whole.
Mother
Children
Growing Up
Love's Just One Of The Ways Through, And It Can Go Wrong, And Miss. Pain Never Misses. But Therefore We Don't Have Much Choice About Enduring It! We Will, Whether We Want To Or Not.
Pain
Choices
Missing
The Airport Bookstore Did Not Sell Books, Only Bestsellers, Which Sita Dulip Cannot Read Without Risking A Severe Systemic Reaction.
Book
Airports
Reactions
The Creative Adult Is The Child Who Has Survived.
Children
Creativity
Imagination
What Is Love Of One's Country; Is It Hate Of One's Uncountry? Then It's Not A Good Thing. Is It Simply Self-love? That's A Good Thing, But One Musn't Make A Virtue Of It, Or A Profession...insofar As I Love Life, I Love [my Country], But That Sort Of Love Does Not Have A Boundary-line Of Hate. And Beyond That, I Am Ignorant, I Hope.
Country
Hate
Love Life
We Need Writers Who Know The Difference Between The Production Of A Commodity And The Practice Of An Art.
Art
Practice
Differences
What The Brain Does By Itself Is Infinitely More Fascinating And Complex Than Any Response It Can Make To Chemical Stimulation.
Brain
Doe
Chemicals
Take The Tale In Your Teeth, Then, And Bite Till The Blood Runs, Hoping It's Not Poison.
Running
Blood
Teeth
The Reason Literacy Is Important Is That Literature Is The Operating Instructions. The Best Manual We Have. The Most Useful Guide To The Country We're Visiting, Life.
Country
Reading
Important
We Broke The World To Make It Whole.
World
Broke
Whole
It Is Hard To Swear When Sex Is Not Dirty And Blasphemy Does Not Exist.
Sex
Dirty
Doe
You Will Die. You Will Not Live Forever. Nor Will Any Man Nor Any Thing. Nothing Is Immortal. But Only To Us Is It Given To Know That We Must Die. And That Is A Great Gift: The Gift Of Selfhood. For We Have Only What We Know We Must Lose, What We Are Willing To Lose... That Selfhood Which Is Our Torment, And Our Treasure, And Our Humanity, Does Not Endure. It Changes; It Is Gone, A Wave On The Sea. Would You Have The Sea Grow Still And The Tides Cease, To Save One Wave, To Save Yourself?
Men
Sea
Forever
Fake Realism Is The Escapist Literature Of Our Time. And Probably The Ultimate Escapist Reading Is That Masterpiece Of Total Unreality, The Daily Stock Market Report.
Reading
Fake
Literature
No Matter How Successful, Beloved, Influential Her Work Was, When A Woman Author Dies, Nine Times Out Of Ten, She Gets Dropped From The Lists, The Courses, The Anthologies, While The Men Get Kept. ... If She Had The Nerve To Have Children, Her Chances Of Getting Dropped Are Higher Still. ... So If You Want Your Writing To Be Taken Seriously, Don't Marry And Have Kids, And Above All, Don't Die. But If You Have To Die, Commit Suicide. They Approve Of That.
Suicide
Children
Taken
It Was Men's Ambitions, They Said, That Had Perverted All The Arts To Ends Of Gain.
Art
Ambition
Men
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