Run the country by doing what’s expected. Win the war by doing the unexpected. Control the world by doing nothing.

Ursula K Le Guin, Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]

Hermetic quote Le Guin Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching run country doing expected win war unexpected control world nothing

Consider also:

  1. “We’re spaceward bound tomorrow But there’s no grief or sorrow Alone in the sky. The moon’s riding high. You ripe ears of barley, goodbye.”
  2. You adapted, and you made sacrifices. You did it for your children or for love. You did it because of illness or because of an accident. You did it because you had new dreams
  3. “She had found a nasty, forbidden little book in the great Ninth repositories of nasty, forbidden little books, and all the Houses would have had a collective aneurysm if they knew she’d even read it.”
  4. “Those who think to win the world by doing something to it, I see them come to grief. For the world is a sacred object. Nothing is to be done to it. To do anything to it is to damage it. To seize it is to lose it.”
  5. Reader’s Theatre: Household Gods, Thu Sep 21, 7-9pm Pacific, in voice chat