“It would not help the people become a community, and if they could not unite, nothing else they did would matter.”

About Octavia E. Butler

1947 – 2006

American science fiction author known for 'Parable of the Sower' and 'Kindred', and the Earthseed philosophy at the centre of her novels.

“All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is Change.”

“I realize I don’t know very much. None of us knows very much. But we can all learn more. Then we can teach one another.”

“Freedom is dangerous, Cory, but it’s precious, too. You can’t just throw it away or let it slip away.”

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

“It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?”

“In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw us aside.”

“If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces.”

“That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within.”

“Always take the short cut; and that is the rational one. Therefore say and do everything according to soundest reason.”