Terrans are humans from Earth. Their world has been largely decimated and plummeted into crisis, and the population, which peaked at nine billion, has dropped to less than half a billion.
Terrans Quotes in The Dispossessed
The The Dispossessed quotes below are all either spoken by Terrans or refer to Terrans. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 5
Quotes
“The law of existence is struggle—competition—elimination of the weak—a ruthless war for survival. And I want to see the best survive. The kind of humanity I know. The Cetians. You and I: Urras and Anarres. We’re ahead of them now, all those Hainish and Terrans and whatever else they call themselves, and we’ve got to stay ahead of them. They brought us the interstellar drive, but we’re making better interstellar ships now than they are. When you come to release your Theory, I earnestly hope you’ll think of your duty to your own people, your own kind. Of what loyalty means, and to whom it’s due.”
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Terrans Term Timeline in The Dispossessed
The timeline below shows where the term Terrans appears in The Dispossessed. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 3
...thing is safe in his head. The men discuss a relativity theory by “Ainsetain of Terra,” noting that though it is several hundred years old it contains plenty of “fresh ideas.”
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Chapter 9
...Pae as his enemy, though it was Pae who gave Shevek the translations of alien Terran work on relativity which could potentially be essential to finalizing the temporal theory. Shevek finds...
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As Shevek considers Terran theories of relativity, he experiences a major breakthrough in his own work, and realizes that...
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Chapter 11
...of its existence. The city is just an hour by trail from Nio Esseia. The Terran embassy is also located in Roddared, and Shevek arrives there at seven in the morning...
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...tending to him. The men and women surrounding him tell him that he is on Terran soil, and is safe. Shevek is perplexed by the Terrans’ strange, “childlike” features. Exhausted, Shevek...
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Because the Terran embassy is to the Council of World Governments and not the nation of A-Io, Keng...
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...going to be stolen by the government so that they could use it to threaten Terra and Hain with “the annihilation of space.” Shevek explains that what the Ioti government ultimately...
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...propertarians buy the truth from him. Shevek wants to give his idea as a gift—to Terra, Hain, and all the other worlds, so that it may only be used for common...
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Keng tells Shevek that to her and her fellow Terrans, Urras is “the kindliest, most various, most beautiful of all the worlds, [and] the world...
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...does not understand time. Haunted by a wasted past and fearful of an impossible future, Terrans focus on “nothing but the rich, real, stable present, the moment now.” The present cannot...
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...but absent ones can be forgotten.” Shevek apologizes for not having anything to give the Terrans in return for his theory, and Keng asks if he really thinks he is giving...
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