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  "title": "Parable of the Talents",
  "slug": "parable-of-the-talents",
  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/octavia-e-butler/parable-of-the-talents",
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  "author": {
    "name": "Octavia E. Butler",
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      "slug": "consider-we-are",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/octavia-e-butler/parable-of-the-talents/consider-we-are",
      "text": "Consider—\n\nWe are born\n\nNot with purpose,\n\nBut with potential.",
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      "chapter": null,
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      "page": 1,
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      "topics": [
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          "name": "meaning of life",
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      "slug": "beware-ignorance-protects",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/octavia-e-butler/parable-of-the-talents/beware-ignorance-protects",
      "text": "Beware:\n\nIgnorance\n\nProtects itself\n\nIgnorance\n\nPromotes suspicion.\n\nSuspicion\n\nEngenders fear.\n\nFear quails,\n\nIrrational and blind,\n\nOr fear looms,\n\nDefiant and closed.\n\nBlind, closed,\n\nSuspicious, afraid,\n\nIgnorance\n\nProtects itself,\n\nAnd protected,\n\nIgnorance grows.",
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      "slug": "im-not-a-demagogue",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/octavia-e-butler/parable-of-the-talents/im-not-a-demagogue",
      "text": "“I’m not a demagogue.”\n\n“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.”",
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      "page": 395,
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      "slug": "im-literate-and",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/octavia-e-butler/parable-of-the-talents/im-literate-and",
      "text": "I’m literate, and the idea of leaving children illiterate is criminal.",
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      "page": 405,
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      "slug": "overall-the-pox",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/octavia-e-butler/parable-of-the-talents/overall-the-pox",
      "text": "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.\n\nAmid 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.",
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      "page": 8,
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      "slug": "life-is-getting",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/octavia-e-butler/parable-of-the-talents/life-is-getting",
      "text": "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.",
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      "slug": "are-you-earthseed",
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      "text": "Are you Earthseed?\n\nDo you believe?\n\nBelief will not save you.\n\nOnly actions\n\nGuided and shaped\n\nBy belief and knowledge\n\nWill save you.\n\nBelief\n\nInitiates and guides action—\n\nOr it does nothing.",
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      "slug": "we-give-our",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/octavia-e-butler/parable-of-the-talents/we-give-our",
      "text": "We give our dead\n\nTo the orchards\n\nAnd the groves.\n\nWe give our dead\n\nTo life.",
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      "slug": "no-one-thought",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/octavia-e-butler/parable-of-the-talents/no-one-thought",
      "text": "No one thought about what kind of society we were building with such stupid decisions. People who could afford to educate their children in private schools were glad to see the government finally stop wasting their tax money, educating other people’s children. They seemed to think they lived on Mars. They imagined that a country filled with poor, uneducated, unemployable people somehow wouldn’t hurt them!",
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      "slug": "we-keep-falling",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/octavia-e-butler/parable-of-the-talents/we-keep-falling",
      "text": "We keep falling into the same ditches, you know? I mean, we learn more and more about the physical universe, more about our own bodies, more technology, but somehow, down through history, we go on building empires of one kind or another, then destroying them in one way or another. We go on having stupid wars that we justify and get passionate about, but in the end, all they do is kill huge numbers of people, maim others, impoverish still more, spread disease and hunger, and set the stage for the next war. And when we look at all of that in history, we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, that’s the way things are. That’s the way things always have been.",
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      "text": "If you hear nonsense like that often enough for long enough, you begin to believe it.",
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      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/octavia-e-butler/parable-of-the-talents/jarrett-would-be-easier",
      "text": "Jarrett would be easier to take if he cared half as much about children’s bodies and minds as he pretends to care about their souls.",
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      "text": "All religions are ultimately cargo cults.\n\nAdherents perform required rituals, follow\n\nspecific rules, and expect to be supernaturally\n\ngifted with desired rewards—long life,\n\nhonor, wisdom, children, good health, wealth,\n\nvictory over opponents, immortality after\n\ndeath, any desired rewards.",
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      "slug": "we-were-snatched",
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      "text": "We were snatched away and given alone into the hands of people who believed that it was their duty to break us and remake us in the Christian American image. And, of course, breaking people is much easier than putting them together again.\n\nSo much agony caused, so much evil done in God’s name.",
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      "text": "When vision fails\n\nDirection is lost.\n\nWhen direction is lost\n\nPurpose may be forgotten.\n\nWhen purpose if forgotten\n\nEmotion rules alone.\n\nWhen emotion rules alone,\n\nDestruction...destruction.",
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