Octavia E. Butler

All religions are ultimately cargo cults.

Adherents perform required rituals, follow

specific rules, and expect to be supernaturally

gifted with desired rewards—long life,

honor, wisdom, children, good health, wealth,

victory over opponents, immortality after

death, any desired rewards.

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.

So much agony caused, so much evil done in God’s name.

When vision fails

Direction is lost.

When direction is lost

Purpose may be forgotten.

When purpose if forgotten

Emotion rules alone.

When emotion rules alone,

Destruction...destruction.

“He had guns,” Celia said. “Iosif didn’t like guns, but Stefan did.”

It hadn’t helped him survive.

He thought about that for a moment, wondered what he should say. The truth or nothing. The truth.

“I didn’t want to scare you. We don’t want to scare anyone.”

“No? Well, sometimes it’s a good thing to scare people. Sometimes fear is all that will keep them from doing stupid things.”

The Destiny of Earthseed

Is to take root among the stars.

All that you touch

You Change.

All that you Change

Changes you.

The only lasting truth

Is Change.

God

Is Change.

Freedom is dangerous, Cory, but it’s precious, too. You can’t just throw it away or let it slip away. You can’t sell it for bread and pottage.

Tomas stopped and looked at the three Oankali. “Do you believe in spirits?”

“We believe in life,” Ahajas said.

“Life after death?”

Ahajas smoothed her tentacles briefly in agreement. “When I’m dead,” she said, “I will nourish other life.”

“But I mean—”

“If I died on a lifeless world, a world that could sustain some form of life if it were tenacious enough, organelles within each cell of my body would survive and evolve. In perhaps a thousand million years, that world would be as full of life as this one.”

“...it would?”

“Yes. Our ancestors have seeded a great many barren worlds that way. Nothing is more tenacious than the life we are made of. A world of life from apparent death, from dissolution. That’s what we believe in.”

“Nothing more?”

Ahajas became smooth enough with amusement to reflect firelight. “No, Lelka. Nothing more.”

I wonder what a badge is, other than a license to steal.

People have changed the climate of the world. Now they’re waiting for the old days to come back’