# Quote — Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

> War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to 'a war against' whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off. This is puerile, misleading, and degrading. In stories, it evades any solution but violence and offers the reader mere infantile reassurance. All too often the heroes of such fantasies behave exactly as the villains do, acting with mindless violence, but the hero is on the “right” side and therefore will win. Right makes might.

- Author: [Ursula K. Le Guin](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin.md)
- Book: [A Wizard of Earthsea](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/a-wizard-of-earthsea.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin#A_Wizard_of_Earthsea_(1968)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/a-wizard-of-earthsea/war-as-a-moral

## More from this book

> From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/a-wizard-of-earthsea/from-that-time.md)

> It is light that defeats the dark.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/a-wizard-of-earthsea/it-is-light.md)

> You must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard's power of Changing and Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/a-wizard-of-earthsea/you-must-not.md)