Octavia E. Butler

"When your rage is choking you, it is best to say nothing." (p.275)

Consider—

We are born

Not with purpose,

But with potential.

Beware:

Ignorance

Protects itself

Ignorance

Promotes suspicion.

Suspicion

Engenders fear.

Fear quails,

Irrational and blind,

Or fear looms,

Defiant and closed.

Blind, closed,

Suspicious, afraid,

Ignorance

Protects itself,

And protected,

Ignorance grows.

“I’m not a demagogue.”

“That’s too bad. That leaves the field to people who are demagogues—to the Jarrets of the world. And there have always been Jarrets. Probably there always will be.”

I’m literate, and the idea of leaving children illiterate is criminal.

You're truly free for the first time. What could be more difficult than that?

We can see that our Councils aren’t games like the tribunals humans have. The work of a Council of Judgment is to learn the truth and then decide what to do about it within our law. It isn’t about following laws so strictly that the guilty go unpunished or the innocent are made to suffer. It isn’t about protecting everyone’s rights. It’s about finding the truth, period, and then deciding what to do about it.

My ignorance wasn’t just annoying. It was dangerous.

Overall, the Pox has had the effect of an installment-plan World War III. In fact, there were several small, bloody shooting wars going on around the world during the Pox. These were stupid affairs—wastes of life and treasure. They were fought, ostensibly, to defend against vicious foreign enemies. All too often, they were actually fought because inadequate leaders did not know what else to do. Such leaders knew that they could depend on fear, suspicion, hatred, need, and greed to arouse patriotic support for war.

Amid all this, somehow, the United States of America suffered a major, nonmilitary defeat. It lost no important war, yet it did not survive the Pox. Perhaps it simply lost sight of what it once intended to be, then blundered aimlessly until it exhausted itself.

“Don’t you know everything?”

God smiled. “No, I outgrew that trick long ago. You can’t imagine how boring it was.”

Life is getting better, but that won’t stop a war if politicians and business people decide it’s to their advantage to have one.

Are you Earthseed?

Do you believe?

Belief will not save you.

Only actions

Guided and shaped

By belief and knowledge

Will save you.

Belief

Initiates and guides action—

Or it does nothing.