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The Explorer Who Will Not Come Back Or Send Back His Ships To Tell His Tale Is Not An Explorer, Only An Adventurer; And His Sons Are Born In Exile.
-Ursula K. Le Guin
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The Explorer Who Will

Ursula K. Le Guin
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The Explorer Who Will Not Come Back Or Send Back His Ships To Tell His Tale Is Not An Explorer, Only An Adventurer; And His Sons Are Born In Exile.

Understanding the Quote: "the explorer who will not come back or send back his ships..."

This quote by Ursula K. Le Guin reflects deeply on the theme of travel. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Travel, Son, Ships, 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 travel and son. 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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Topic
Travel
Son
Ships
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Almost Anything Carried To A Logical Extreme Becomes Depressing.
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As A Kitten Does What All Other Kittens Do, So A Child Wants To Do What Other Children Do, With A Wanting That Is As Powerful As It Is Mindless. Since We Human Beings Have To Learn What We Do, We Have To Start Out That Way, But Human Mindfulness Begins Where That Wish To Be The Same Leaves Off.
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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.
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Character
Gradually The Healing Took Place, Seeming As It Always Does That It Wasn't Taking Place.
Healing
Doe
Seeming
Those Who Dislike Fantasy Are Very Often Equally Bored Or Repelled By Science. They Don't Like Either Hobbits, Or Quasars; They Don't Feel At Home With Them; They Don't Want Complexities, Remoteness. If There Is Any Such Connection, I'll Bet That It Is Basically An Aesthetic One
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Connections
A Person Who Believes, As She Did, That Things Fit: That There Is A Whole Of Which One Is A Part, And That In Being A Part One Is Whole: Such A Person Has No Desire Whatever, At Any Time, To Play God. Only Those Who Have Denied Their Being Yearn To Play At It.
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Play
Desire
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
Owning Is Owing, Having Is Hoarding.
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Owing
Besides, When You Say You're A Feminist It Annoys The Bigots And The Old Farts And The Prissy Ladies So Much, It's Kind Of Irresistible.
Feminist
Kind
Annoying
Can True Function Arise From Basic Dysfunction?
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Arise
Function
If You See A Whole Thing - It Seems That It's Always Beautiful. Planets, Lives... But Up Close A World's All Dirt And Rocks. And Day To Day, Life's A Hard Job, You Get Tired, You Lose The Pattern.
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Jobs
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Men
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Orthodoxy
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May
Abstractions About Right And Wrong, Whether They Are As Old As Thou Shalt Not Kill Or As Modern As Do Your Own Thing, Often Serve Only To Confuse And Weaken Genuine Moral Decision.
Decision
Morality
Modern
In That Moment Ged Understood The Singing Of The Bird, And The Language Of The Water Falling In The Basin Of The Fountain, And The Shape Of The Clouds, And The Beginning And End Of The Wind That Stirred The Leaves; It Seemed To Him That He Himself Was A Word Spoken By The Sunlight.
Fall
Clouds
Wind
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
Anyhow They’re Always Exceptions. But Most Women, Their Only Relationship To A Man Is Having. Either Owning Or Being Owned.
Men
Exception
I Believe That Maturity Is Not An Outgrowing, But A Growing Up: That An Adult Is Not A Dead Child, But A Child Who Survived.
Children
Growing Up
Believe
One Voice Speaking Truth Is A Greater Force Than Fleets And Armies.
Time
Army
Voice
Crankish Attacks On The Freedom To Read Are Common At Present. When Backed And Coordinated By Organized Groups, They Become Sinister.
Groups
Common
Sinister
Claude Levi-strauss Has Been A Great Source Of Fruitful Irritation To My Mind.
Irritation
Mind
Levi Strauss
The One Thing A Writer Has To Have Is A Pencil And Some Paper. That's Enough, So Long As She Knows That She And She Alone Is In Charge Of That Pencil, And Responsible, She And She Alone, For What It Writes On That Paper.
Writing
Long
Paper
Sometimes You Must Go Against The Wheel's Turn.
Wheels
Sometimes
Turns
If You Deny Any Affinity With Another Person Or Kind Of Person, If You Declare It To Be Wholly Different From Yourself
Equality
Different
Kind
Do You Know How To Read?" "no. It Is One Of The Black Arts." He Nodded. "but A Useful One," He Said.
Art
Black
Said
The Counsel Of The Dead Is Not Profitable To The Living.
Profitable
When People Say, Did You Always Want To Be A Writer?, I Have To Say No! I Always Was A Writer.
People
Want
If A Book Were Written All In Numbers, It Would Be True. It Would Be Just. Nothing Said In Words Ever Came Out Quite Even. Things In Words Got Twisted And Ran Together, Instead Of Staying Straight And Fitting Together. But Underneath The Words, At The Center, Like The Center Of The Square, It All Came Out Even. Everything Could Change, Yet Nothing Would Be Lost. If You Saw The Numbers You Could See That, The Balance, The Pattern. You Saw The Foundations Of The World. And They Were Solid.
Book
Numbers
Squares
The Notion That A Story Has A Message Assumes That It Can Be Reduced To A Few Abstract Words, Neatly Summarized In A School Or College Examination Paper Or A Brisk Critical Review.
School
College
Paper
There's A Good Deal In Common Between The Mind's Eye And The Tv Screen, And Though The Tv Set Has All Too Often Been The Boobtube, It Could Be, It Can Be, The Box Of Dreams.
Dream
Eye
Mind
We Broke The World To Make It Whole.
World
Broke
Whole
The Law Of Evolution Is That The Strongest Survives.
Law
Evolution
Strongest
Do You See, Arren, How An Act Is Not, As Young Men Think, Like A Rock That One Picks Up And Throws, And It Hits Or Misses, And That's The End Of It. When That Rock Is Lifted, The Earth Is Lighter; The Hand That Bears It Is Heavier. When It Is Thrown, The Circuits Of The Stars Respond, And Where It Strikes Or Falls The Universe Is Changed.
Stars
Fall
Thinking
Now Perhaps An Excessive Dread Of Overpopulation--overcrowding--reflects Not An Outward Reality, But An Inward State Of Mind. If You Feel Overcrowded When You're Not, What Does That Mean? Maybe That You're Afraid Of Human Contact--of Being Close To People, Of Being Touched.
Mean
Reality
People
To Know There Is A Choice Is To Have To Make The Choice: Change Or Stay: River Or Rock.
Rocks
Rivers
Choices
The World Is In Balance . To Light A Candle Is To Cast A Shadow.
Light
Balance
Shadow
What Is The Use Trying To Describe The Flowing Of A River At Any One Moment, And Then At The Next Moment, And Then At The Next, And The Next, And The Next? You Wear Out. You Say: There Is A Great River, And It Flows Through This Land, And We Have Named It History.
Land
Rivers
Trying
But It Doesn't Take A Thousand Men To Open A Door, My Lord." "it Might To Keep It Open.
Men
Doors
Might
Artists Are People Who Are Not At All Interested In The Facts - Only In The Truth.
Artist
People
Facts
In War Everybody Is A Prisoner.
War
Prisoner
Time Has Two Aspects. There Is The Arrow, The Running River, Without Which There Is No Change, No Progress, Or Direction, Or Creation. And There Is The Circle Or The Cycle, Without Which There Is Chaos, Meaningless Succession Of Instants, A World Without Clocks Or Seasons Or Promises.
Running
Time
Circles
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?
Responsibility
Law
Punishment
What Is More Arrogant Than Honesty?
Honesty
Arrogant
One Must Work With Time And Not Against It.
Time
To Claim Power Over What You Do Not Understand Is Not Wise, Nor Is The End Of It Likely To Be Good.
Wise
Ends
Claims
Hate Gets Going, It Goes Round, It Gets Older And Tighter And Older And Tighter, Until It Holds A Person Inside It Like A Fist Holds A Stick.
Hate
Hatred
Sticks
A Man Who Doesn't Detest A Bad Government Is A Fool. And If There Were Such A Thing As A Good Government On Earth, It Would Be A Great Joy To Serve It.
Men
Joy
Fool
Well, The Secret To Writing Is Writing. It's Only A Secret To People Who Don't Want To Hear It. Writing Is How You Be A Writer.
Writing
People
Secret
If Civilization Has An Opposite, It Is War.
War
Opposites
Civilization
Stories Are What Death Thinks He Puts An End To. He Can't Understand That They End In Him, But They Don't End With Him.
Thinking
Stories
Ends
Planets Were Very Large Places, On Any Scale But That Of The Spaces In Between Them.
Space
Scales
Planets
...fiction Is Made Out Of The Writer's Experience, His Whole Life From Infancy On, Everything He's Thought And Done And Seen And Read And Dreamed. But Experience Isn't Something You Go And Get - It's A Gift, And The Only Prerequisite For Receiving It Is That You Be Open To It. A Closed Soul Can Have The Most Immense Adventures, Go Through A Civil War Or A Trip To The Moon, And Have Nothing To Show For All That "experience"; Whereas The Open Soul Can Do Wonders With Nothing.
War
Adventure
Moon
The Thing About Working With Time, Instead Of Against It, He Thought, Is That It Is Not Wasted. Even Pain Counts.
Pain
I Think The Mystery Of Art Lies In This, That Artists’ Relationship Is Essentially With Their Work — Not With Power, Not With Profit, Not With Themselves, Not Even With Their Audience.
Art
Lying
Thinking
No Darkness Lasts Forever. And Even There, There Are Stars.
Stars
Forever
Darkness
The Important Thing Is Not The Finding, It Is The Seeking, It Is The Devotion With Which One Spins The Wheel Of Prayer And Scripture, Discovering The Truth Little By Little.
Inspirational
Prayer
Important
By And Large Books Are Mankind's Best Invention.
Book
Invention
Mankind
First Sentences Are Doors To Worlds.
Doors
World
Firsts
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
Taken
Writing
We Are Volcanoes. When We Women Offer Our Experience As Our Truth, As Human Truth, All The Maps Change. There Are New Mountains.
Peace
Volcanoes
Feminism
The Search For Pleasure Is Circular, Repetitive, Atemporal. The Variety Seeking Of The Spectator, The Thrill Hunter, The Sexually Promiscuous, Always Ends In The Same Place. It Has An End. It Comes To The End And Has To Start Over. It Is Not A Journey And Return, But A Closed Cycle, A Locked Room, A Cell.
Journey
Cells
Starting Over
What Is An Anarchist? One Who, Choosing, Accepts The Responsibility Of Choice.
Responsibility
Choices
Anarchist
It Was Men's Ambitions, They Said, That Had Perverted All The Arts To Ends Of Gain.
Art
Ambition
Men
Certainly The Effort To Remain Unchanged, Young, When The Body Gives So Impressive A Signal Of Change As The Menopause, Is Gallant; But It Is A Stupid, Self-sacrificial Gallantry, Better Befitting A Boy Of Twenty Than A Woman Of Forty-five Or Fifty. Let The Athletes Die Young And Laurel-crowned. Let The Soldiers Earn The Purple Hearts. Let Women Die Old, White-crowned, With Human Hearts.
Stupid
Athlete
Heart
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
I Talk About The Gods, I Am An Atheist. But I Am An Artist Too, And Therefore A Liar. Distrust Everything I Say. I Am Telling The Truth.
Atheist
Liars
Artist
The Fish In The Creek Said Nothing. Fish Never Do. Few People Know What Fish Think About Injustice, Or Anything Else.
Thinking
People
Injustice
Odonianism Is Anarchism. Not The Bomb-in-the-pocket Stuff, Which Is Terrorism, Whatever Name It Tries To Dignify Itself With, Not The Social-darwinist Economic 'libertarianism' Of The Far Right; But Anarchism, As Prefigured In Early Taoist Thought, And Expounded By Shelley And Kropotkin, Goldman And Goodman. Anarchism's Principal Target Is The Authoritarian State (capitalist Or Socialist); Its Principle Moral-practical Theme Is Cooperation (solidarity, Mutual Aid). It Is The Most Idealistic, And To Me The Most Interesting, Of All Political Theories.
Names
Interesting
Political
Success Is Somebody Else's Failure. Success Is The American Dream We Can Keep Dreaming Because Most People In Most Places, Including Thirty Million Of Ourselves, Live Wide Awake In The Terrible Reality Of Poverty.
Success
Dream
Reality
When In The Land Of Property Think Like A Propertarian. Dress Like One, Eat Like One, Act Like One, Be One.
Thinking
Land
Dresses
The King Was Pregnant.
Kings
Pregnant Women
Were Pregnant
It Always Seemed To Me They're Sort Of Alike ... Magic And Music. Spells And Tunes. For One Thing, You Have To Get Them Just Exactly Right.
Magic
Tunes
Spells
To Break A Promise Is To Deny The Reality Of The Past. Therefore It Is To Deny The Hope Of A Real Future.
Positive
Real
Past
What She Needs, At Least One Thing She Needs, Is Companionship. After All Why Should She Eat? Who Needs Her To Be Alive? What We Call Psychosis Is Sometimes Simply Realism. But Human Beings Can't Live On Realism Alone.
Psychosis
Needs
Alive
The Preservation Of Life Seems To Be Rather A Slogan Than A Genuine Goal Of The Anti-abortion Forces; What They Want Is Control. Control Over Behavior: Power Over Women. Women In The Anti-choice Movement Want To Share In Male Power Over Women, And Do So By Denying Their Own Womanhood, Their Own Rights And Responsibilities.
Women
Responsibility
Rights
Virginity Is Now A Mere Preamble Or Waiting Room To Be Got Out Of As Soon As Possible; It Is Without Significance.
Sex
Waiting Rooms
Preamble
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
We're Each Of Us Alone, To Be Sure. What Can You Do But Hold Your Hand Out In The Dark?
Dark
Hands
Death And Life Are The Same Thing-like The Two Sides Of My Hand, The Palm And The Back. And Still The Palm And The Back Are Not The Same...they Can Be Neither Separated, Nor Mixed.
Hands
Two Sides
Life And Death
It's Not A Weapon Or A Woman Can Make A Man, Or Magery Either, Or Any Power, Anything But Himself.
Men
Weapons
Either Or
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