Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Most believe that a satisfactory future requires a return to an idealized past, a past which never in fact existed.
If you focus your awareness only upon your own rightness, then you invite the forces of opposition to overwhelm you.
If you want immortality, then deny form. Whatever has form has mortality. Beyond form is the formless, the immortal.
Ask what Infinity might produce and the only answer possible was, "Anything." Any good, any evil; any god, any devil.
Prisons are needed only to provide the illusion that courts and police are effective. They're a kind of job insurance.
To know the future absolutely it to be trapped into that future absolutely. It collapses time. Present becomes future.
Can you collect chaos? Not collecting, that is the ultimate gathering. What can you gather without gathering yourself.
One must cast off old agonies as a snake casts off its skin--only to grow a new set and accept all of their limitations.
All proofs inevitably lead to propositions which have no proof! All things are known because we want to believe in them.
And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning 'That path leads ever down into stagnation.
One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp too strongly is to be taken over by power, and thus to become its victim.
The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we do to each other.
There's hope left in these dusty chords. There's a song left in our rusty hearts. We are torn and frayed but love remains.
When you think to take determination of your fate into your own hands, that is the moment you can be crushed. Be cautious.
One learns from books and example only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things.
The person who takes the banal and ordinary and illuminates it in a new way can terrify. We do not want our ideas changed.
Time is a measure of space, just as a range-finder is a measure of space, but measuring locks us into the place we measure.
No matter how much we ask after the truth, self-awareness is often unpleasant. We do not feel kindly toward the Truthsayer.
The act of saying that things exist that cannot be described in words shakes a universe where words are the supreme belief.
Unused power was like a marionette with visible strings, nobody holding them. A compelling attraction: I could make it dance.
To know a thing well, know it's limits; Only when pushed beyond it's tolerance will it's true nature be seen. -The Amtal Rule
Argument closes off the doors of the senses. It always masks violence. Continued too long, argument always leads to violence.
You aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgement of your existence.
Love is a very ancient force, which served its purpose in its day but no longer is essential for the survival of the species.
There has never been a truly selfless rebel, just hypocrites—conscious hypocrites or unconscious hypocrites, it’s all the same.
Since every individual is accountable ultimately to the self, the formation of that self demands our utmost care and attention.
Chance is the nature of our universe. [...] madness represents a chaotic reservoir of surprises. Some surprises can be valuable.
In 1054, the patriarch of Constantinople and the pope excommunicated each other. That was the end of holiness for both churches.
If you need something to worship, then worship life - all life, every last crawling bit of it! We're all in this beauty together!
To attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing the Darkness. It cannot be.
Radicals are only to be feared when you try to suppress them. You must demonstrate that you will use the best of what they offer.
Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless nit-picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma.
... motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches.
the meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture - it begins in the dignity with which we treat the dead
A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.
Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife - chopping off what's incomplete and saying: "Now it's complete because it's ended here."
It is so shocking to find out how many people do not believe that they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.
Technology is both a tool for helping humans and for destroying them. This is the paradox of our times which we're compelled to face.
If enough of us believe, a new thing can be made to exist. Belief structure creates a filter through which chaos is sifted into order.
. . . is to attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing Darkness. It cannot be.
There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man - with human flesh.
They say they seek security and quiet, the condition they call peace. Even as they speak they create the seeds of turmoil and violence.
To suspect your own mortality is to know the beginning of terror, to learn irrefutably that you are mortal is to know the end of terror.
I live in an apocalyptic dream. My steps fit into it so precisely that I fear most of all I will grow bored reliving the thing so exactly.
Bless the Maker and His water. Bless the coming and going of Him. May His passage cleanse the world. May He keep the world for His people.
If we define Futurism as an exploration beyond accepted limits, then the nature of limiting systems becomes the first object of exploration.
Humans live best when each has his place, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things. Destroy the place and destroy the person.
Justice? Who asks for justice? We make our own justice ... Let us not rail about justice as long as we have arms and the freedom to use them.
For now is my grief heavier than the sands of the seas, she thought. This world has emptied me of all but the oldest purpose: tomorrow's life.
Governments do not know what they cannot do until after they cease to be governments. Each government carries the seeds of its own destruction.