A Quote by Ursula K. Le Guin
there are times when you have to speak because silence is betrayal.
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The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.
I readily concede that a prime minister is not required to speak on every occasion or on every subject, but when there is a duty to speak, silence is unacceptable. Silence can be a strategy, silence can be a tactic, but silence can never be an answer to the ills of our polity and the fault lines of our society.
Was this a betrayal, or was it an act of courage? Perhaps both. Neither one involves forethought: such things take place in an instant, in an eyeblink. This can only be because they have been rehearsed by us already, over and over, in silence and darkness; in such silence, such darkness, that we are ignorant of them ourselves. Blind but sure-footed, we step forward as if into a remembered dance.
It is very hard to live with silence. The real silence is death and this is terrible. To approach this silence, it is necessary to journey to the desert. You do not go to the desert to find identity, but to loses it, to lose your personality, to be anonymous. You make yourself void. You become silence. You become more silent than the silence around you. And then something extraordinary happens: you hear silence speak.
One thing I am certain of, I do not want to be betrayed, but thats quite hard to say casually, at the beginning of a relationship. It’s not a word people use very often, which confuses me, because there are different kinds of infidelity, but betrayal is betrayal wherever you find it. By betrayal, I mean promising to be on your side, and then being on somebody else’s.
A time comes when silence is betrayal.
People speak because they are afraid of silence. They speak mechanically whether aloud or to themselves. They are intoxicated by this vocal gruel that ensnares every object and every being. They talk about rain and fine weather; they talk about money, about love, about nothing. And even when they are talking about their most exalted love, they use words uttered a hundred times, threadbare phrases.
Prayer is speaking to God - but sometimes He uses our times of prayerful silence to speak to us in return.
My desires are foolish. The things I want are better kept to myself. The hand of silence is steady. The hard blade of silence is clean like night. The code is absolute. Silence is eternal and patient. Silence never makes a fool of itself like I have so many times.
We've all gone through some kind of betrayal, whether it's with a boyfriend or a friend or a family member. That's why this is so relatable to everybody because we all know what it feels like to feel that betrayal.
Something is happening because of silence, because of peace, because of silence; if your mind is silent, if your mind is quiet, there is God, there is silence, this is the silence that is contagious.
If your voice is heard by more people because you've earned some kind of name and fame, your silence on an issue of urgent moral importance is even more of a betrayal. Privilege is obligation.
Between the uprightness of my conscience and the hardness of my lot, I know not how either to show respect to my feelings or to the times. The bitterness of my mind urges me at all hazards to speak what I think, whereas the necessity of the times prompts me, however unbecomingly, to keep silence. Good God! Which way shall I turn myself?
Let the veil of silence fall presently over what happened afterwards. Silence, too, can speak out.
The beginning of prayer is silence. If we really want to pray we must first learn to listen, for in the silence of the heart God speaks. And to be able to see that silence, to be able to hear God we need a clean heart; for a clean heart can see God, can hear God, can listen to God; and then only from the fullness of our heart can we speak to God. But we cannot speak unless we have listened, unless we have made that connection with God in the silence of our heart.
There are different qualities of silence. There's the silence that sustains us, as women, that nourishes us, the silence where I believe our true voice, our authentic voice, dwells. But there's also the silence that censors us, that tells us what we have to say does not want to be heard, should not be heard, has no value. And that if we speak, it will be at our own peril. This kind of silence is deadly. This kind of silence is deadening to who we are as women. And when a woman is silenced, the world is silenced. When a woman speaks, there is an opening.
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