Octavia E. Butler Quotes

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

You tend to resent people you’re afraid of.

From what I've read," I said to him, "the world goes crazy every three or four decades. The trick is to survive until it goes sane again.

Your God doesn't care about you at all," Travis said.
"All the more reason to care about myself and others.

There’s no narcotic like exhaustion.

The only way to prove to yourself that you have power is to use it

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.

When it comes to strangers with guns," I told her, "I think suspicion is more likely to keep you alive than trust.

If everyone could feel everyone else’s pain, who would torture?

Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation.

All struggles
Are essentially
Power struggles.
Who will rule,
Who will lead,
Who will define,
refine,
confine,
design,
Who will dominate.
All struggles
Are essentially
Power struggles, And most
are no more intellectual
than two rams
knocking their heads together.

The Destiny of Earthseed
Is to take root among the stars.

A tree
Cannot grow
In its parents’ shadows.

It’s better to teach people than to scare them, Lauren. If you scare them and nothing happens, they lose their fear, and you lose some of your authority with them.

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. We can stop denying reality or hoping it will go away by magic.