# Quote — Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe Of Heaven

> What's wrong with changing things? Now, I wonder if this self-canceling, centerpoised personality of yours leads you to look at things defensively. I want you to try to detach yourself from yourself and try to see your own viewpoint from the outside, objectively. You are afraid of losing your balance. But change need not unbalance you; life's not a static object, after all. It's a process. There's no holding still. Intellectually you know that, but emotionally you refuse it. Nothing remains the same from one moment to the next, you can't step into the same river twice. Life-evolution-the whole universe of space/time, matter/energy—existence itself—is essentially change.

- Author: [Ursula K. Le Guin](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin.md)
- Book: [The Lathe Of Heaven](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-lathe-of-heaven.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin#The_Lathe_of_Heaven_(1971)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-lathe-of-heaven/whats-wrong-with

## More from this book

> I haven't any strength, I haven't any character, I'm a born tool. I haven't any destiny. All I have is dreams. And now other people run them.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-lathe-of-heaven/i-havent-any.md)

> He knew that in so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to fill the void.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-lathe-of-heaven/he-knew-that.md)

> You have to help another person. But it’s not right to play God with masses of people. To be God you have to know what you’re doing. And to do any good at all, just believing you're right and your motives are good isn’t enough. You have to...be in touch. He isn’t in touch. No one else, no thing even, has an existence of its own for him; he sees the world only as a means to his end. It doesn’t make any difference if his end is good; means are all we’ve got.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-lathe-of-heaven/you-have-to-help.md)