When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. -- 1st law of Arthur C. Clarke
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. -- 2nd law of Arthur C. Clarke
A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -- 3rd law of Arthur C. Clarke
Let the magic show begin! -- me
For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert -- 4th law of Arthur C. Clarke
For every PhD there is an equal and opposite PhD -- Gibson's Law
The meek shall inherit the earth. The rest of us are getting the hell off this rock! -- me
Maybe Jesus was right when he said that the meek shall inherit the earth -- but they inherit very small plots, about six feet by three. -- Lazarus Long (RAH)
186,000 miles/second. It's the law! -- Anonymous (Einstein?)
You're #1 in my book, too! -- Rosie
A good friend will bail you out of jail. A best friend will be sitting next to you saying 'Dude, that was awesome!' -- pshwd
Conservatism: The search for a moral justification of selfishness. -- Dean Booth
We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. -- Jonathan Swift
I hate housework. You make the beds, you wash the dishes, and six months later, you have to start all over again. -- Joan Rivers
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. -- Fight Club
"When was the last time you took LSD?" "I'm tripping now." -- Timothy Leary
I'm still an atheist, thank God. -- Luis Bunuel
To Serve Man - Gustatus similis pullus - Tastes like chicken!
The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church. -- Ferdinand Magellan
The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma. -- Abraham Lincoln
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear. -- Thomas Jefferson
Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis. -- Sigmund Freud
There is so much in the bible against which every insinct of my being rebels, so much so that I regret the necessity which has compelled me to read it through from beginning to end. -- Helen Keller
We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes. -- Gene Roddenberry
A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows. -- Samuel Clemens
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for a reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. -- Albert Einstein
It is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists and were religion not inculcated into their minds, they would remain so. -- Ernestine Rose
All thinking men are atheists. -- Ernest Hemingway
Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence. -- Richard Dawkins
The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion -- George Washington
Whenever... preachers, instead of a lesson in religion, put [their congregation] off with a discourse on the Copernican system, on chemical affinities, on the construction of government, or the characters or conduct of those administering it, it is a breach of contract, depriving their audience of the kind of service for which they are salaried, and giving them, instead of it, what they did not want, or, if wanted, would rather seek from better sources in that particular art of science. -- Thomas Jefferson to P. H. Wendover, 1815. ME 14:281
This will be the best security for maintaining our liberties. A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins. -- Benjamin Franklin
This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it -- John Adams
It does me know injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. -- Thomas Jefferson
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. -- Thomas Paine
I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature. -- Thomas Jefferson
Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I'll spend the first four hours sharpening my ax. -- Abraham Lincoln
There's a fine line between love and hate
And I don't mind
Just let me say that I like that
I like that -- Breaking Benjamin
I don't wanna change the world
I just wanna leave it colder -- Breaking Benjamin
Freedom of Press is limited to those who own one -- H.L. Mencken
No one really knows if she's drunk or if she's stoned, but she's
Comin' back to my place tonight! -- Theory of a Down
A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. To begin your study of the life of Muad'Dib, then, take care that you first place him in his time: born in the 57th year of the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV. And take the most special care that you locate Muad'Dib in his place: the planet Arrakis. Do not be deceived by the fact that he was born on Caladan and lived his first fifteen years there. Arrakis, the planet known as Dune, is forever his place.
-- from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
To attempt an understanding of Muad'Dib without understanding his mortal enemies, the Harkonnens, is to attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing Darkness. It cannot be.
-- from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
Thus spoke St. Alia-of-the-Knife: "The Reverend Mother must combine the seductive wiles of a courtesan with the untouchable majesty of a virgin goddess, holding these attributes in tension so long as the powers of her youth endure. For when youth and beauty have gone, she will find that the place-between, once occupied by tension, has become a wellspring of cunning and resourcefulness."
-- from "Muad'Dib, Family Commentaries" by the Princess Irulan
You have read that Muad'Dib had no playmates his own age on Caladan. The dangers were too great. But Muad'Dib did have wonderful companion-teachers. There was Gurney Halleck, the troubadour-warrior. You will sing some of Gurney's songs, as you read along in this book. There was Thufir Hawat, the old Mentat Master of Assassins, who struck fear even into the heart of the Padishah Emperor. There were Duncan Idaho, the Swordmaster of the Ginaz; Dr. Wellington Yueh, a name black in treachery but bright in knowledge; the Lady Jessica, who guided her son in the Bene Gesserit Way, and -- of course -- the Duke Leto, whose qualities as a father have long been overlooked.
-- from "A Child's History of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
YUEH (yu'e), Wellington (weling-tun), Stdrd 10,082-10,191; medical doctor of the Suk School (grd Stdrd 10,112); md: Wanna Marcus, B.G. (Stdrd 10,092-10,186?); chiefly noted as betrayer of Duke Leto Atreides. (Cf: Bibliography, Appendix VII [Imperial Conditioning] and Betrayal, The.)
-- from "Dictionary of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
How do we approach the study of Muad'Dib's father? A man of surpassing warmth and surprising coldness was the Duke Leto Atreides. Yet, many facts open the way to this Duke: his abiding love for his Bene Gesserit lady; the dreams he held for his son; the devotion with which men served him. You see him there -- a man snared by Destiny, a lonely figure with his light dimmed behind the glory of his son. Still, one must ask: What is the son but an extension of the father?
-- from "Muad'Dib, Family Commentaries" by the Princess Irulan
With the Lady Jessica and Arrakis, the Bene Gesserit system of sowing implant-legends through the Missionaria Protectiva came to its full fruition. The wisdom of seeding the known universe with a prophecy pattern for the protection of B.G. personnel has long been appreciated, but never have we seen a condition-ut-extremis with more ideal mating of person and preparation. The prophetic legends had taken on Arrakis even to the extent of adopted labels (including Reverend Mother, canto and respondu, and most of the Shari-a panoplia propheticus). And it is generally accepted now that the Lady Jessica's latent abilities were grossly underestimated.
-- from "Analysis: The Arrakeen Crisis" by the Princess Irulan [Private circulation: B.G. file number AR-81088587]
"Yueh! Yueh! Yueh!" goes the refrain. "A million deaths were not enough for Yueh!"
-- from "A Child's History of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
Many have marked the speed with which Muad'Dib learned the necessities of Arrakis. The Bene Gesserit, of course, know the basis of this speed. For the others, we can say that Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad'Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.
-- from "The Humanity of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
What had the Lady Jessica to sustain her in her time of trial? Think you carefully on this Bene Gesserit proverb and perhaps you will see: "Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain."
-- from "Muad'Dib: Family Commentaries" by the Princess Irulan
It is said that the Duke Leto blinded himself to the perils of Arrakis, that he walked heedlessly into the pit. Would it not be more likely to suggest he had lived so long in the presence of extreme danger he misjudged a change in its intensity? Or is it possible he deliberately sacrificed himself that his son might find a better life? All evidence indicates the Duke was a man not easily hoodwinked.
-- from "Muad'Dib: Family Commentaries" by the Princess Irulan
Over the exit of the Arrakeen landing field, crudely carved as though with a poor instrument, there was an inscription that Muad'Dib was to repeat many times. He saw it that first night on Arrakis, having been brought to the ducal command post to participate in his father's first full staff conference. The words of the inscription were a plea to those leaving Arrakis, but they fell with dark import on the eyes of a boy who had just escaped a close brush with death. They said: "O you who know what we suffer here, do not forget us in your prayers. "
-- from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
On that first day when Muad'Dib rode through the streets of Arrakeen with his family, some of the people along the way recalled the legends and the prophecy and they ventured to shout: "Mahdi!" But their shout was more a question than a statement, for as yet they could only hope he was the one foretold as the Lisan al-Gaib, the Voice from the Outer World. Their attention was focused, too, on the mother, because they had heard she was a Bene Gesserit and it was obvious to them that she was like the other Lisan al-Gaib.
-- from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
"There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man--with human flesh."
-- from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
My father, the Padishah Emperor, took me by the hand one day and I sensed in the ways my mother had taught me that he was disturbed. He led me down the Hall of Portraits to the ego-likeness of the Duke Leto Atreides. I marked the strong resemblance between them--my father and this man in the portrait--both with thin, elegant faces and sharp features dominated by cold eyes. "Princess-daughter," my father said, "I would that you'd been older when it came time for this man to choose a woman." My father was 71 at the time and looking no older than the man in the portrait, and I was but 14, yet I remember deducing in that instant that my father secretly wished the Duke had been his son, and disliked the political necessities that made them enemies.
-- "In My Father's House" by the Princess Irulan
Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.
-- from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
"There is no escape--we pay for the violence of our ancestors. "
-- from "The Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
Do you wrestle with dreams?
Do you contend with shadows?
Do you move in a kind of sleep?
Time has slipped away.
Your life is stolen.
You tarried with trifles,
Victim of your folly.
-- Dirge for Jamis on the Funeral Plain, from "Songs of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.
-- from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife--chopping off what's incomplete and saying: "Now, it's complete because it's ended here."
-- from "Collected Sayings of, Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
There is a legend that the instant the Duke Leto Atreides died a meteor streaked across the skies above his ancestral palace on Caladan.
-the Princess Irulan: "Introduction to A Child's History of Muad'Dib"
O Seas of Caladan,
O people of Duke Leto--
Citadel of Leto fallen,
Fallen forever . . .
-- from "Songs of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
When my father, the Padishah Emperor, heard of Duke Leto's death and the manner of it, he went into such a rage as we had never before seen. He blamed my mother and the compact forced on him to place a Bene Gesserit on the throne. He blamed the Guild and the evil old Baron. He blamed everyone in sight, not excepting even me, for he said I was a witch like all the others. And when I sought to comfort him, saying it was done according to an older law of self-preservation to which even the most ancient rulers gave allegiance, he sneered at me and asked if I thought him a weakling. I saw then that he had been aroused to this passion not by concern over the dead Duke but by what that death implied for all royalty. As I look back on it, I think there may have been some prescience in my father, too, for it is certain that his line and Muad'Dib's shared common ancestry.
-- "In My Father's House," by the Princess Irulan
My father once told me that respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. "Something cannot emerge from nothing," he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable "the truth" can be.
-- from "Conversations with Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
Muad'Dib could indeed, see the Future, but you must understand the limits of this power. Think of sight. You have eyes, yet cannot see without light. If you are on the floor of a valley, you cannot see beyond your valley. Just so, Muad'Dib could not always choose to look across the mysterious terrain. He tells us that a single obscure decision of prophecy, perhaps the choice of one word over another, could change the entire aspect of the future. He tells us "The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door." And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning "That path leads ever down into stagnation."
-- from "Arrakis Awakening" by the Princess Irulan
What do you despise? By this are you truly known.
-- from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
At the age of fifteen, he had already learned silence.
-- from "A Child's History of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
We came from Caladan--a paradise world for our form of fife. There existed no need on Caladan to build a physical paradise or a paradise of the mind--we could see the actuality all around us. And the price we paid was the price men have always paid for achieving a paradise in this life--we went soft, we lost our edge.
-- from "Muad'Dib: Conversations" by the Princess Irulan
Family life of the Royal Creche is difficult for many people to understand, but I shall try to give you a capsule view of it. My father had only one real friend, I think. That was Count Hasimir Fenring, the genetic-eunuch and one of the deadliest fighters in the Imperium. The Count, a dapper and ugly little man, brought a new slave-concubine to my father one day and I was dispatched by my mother to spy on the proceedings. All of us spied on my father as a matter of self-protection. One of the slave-concubines permitted my father under the Bene Gesserit-Guild agreement could not, of course, bear a Royal Successor, but the intrigues were constant and oppressive in their similarity. We became adept, my mother and sisters and I, at avoiding subtle instruments of death. It may seem a dreadful thing to say, but I 'm not at all sure my father was innocent in all these attempts. A Royal Family is not like other families. Here was a new slave-concubine, then, red-haired like my father, willowy and graceful. She had a dancer's muscles, and her training obviously had included neuro-enticement. My father looked at her for a long time as she postured unclothed before him. Finally he said: "She is too beautiful. We will save her as a gift. " You have no idea how much consternation this restraint created in the Royal Creche. Subtlety and self-control were, after all, the most deadly threats to us all.
-- "In My Father's House" by the Princess Irulan
Prophecy and prescience--How can they be put to the test in the face of the unanswered questions? Consider: How much is actual prediction of the "waveform" (as Muad'Dib referred to his vision-image) and how much is the prophet shaping the future to fit the prophecy? What of the harmonics inherent in the act of prophecy? Does the prophet see the future or does he see a line of weakness, a fault or cleavage that he may shatter with words or decisions as a diamond-cutter shatters his gem with a blow of a knife?
-- "Private Reflections on Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called "spannungsbogen"--which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.
-- from "The Wisdom of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
My father, the Padishah Emperor, was 72 yet looked no more than 35 the year he encompassed the death of Duke Leto and gave Arrakis back to the Harkonnens. He seldom appeared in public wearing other than a Sardaukar uniform and a Burseg's black helmet with the imperial lion in gold upon its crest. The uniform was an open reminder of where his power lay. He was not always that blatant, though. When he wanted, he could radiate charm and sincerity, but I often wonder in these later days if anything about him was as it seemed. I think now he was a man fighting constantly to escape the bars of an invisible cage. You must remember that he was an emperor, father-head of a dynasty that reached back into the dimmest history. But we denied him a legal son. Was this not the most terrible defeat a ruler ever suffered? My mother obeyed her Sister Superiors where the Lady Jessica disobeyed. Which of them was the stronger? History already has answered.
-- "In My Father's House" by the Princess Irulan
God created Arrakis to train the faithful.
-- from "The Wisdom of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.
-- from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
Muad'Dib tells us in "A Time of Reflection" that his first collisions with Arrakeen necessities were the true beginnings of his education. He learned then how to pole the sand for its weather, learned the language of the wind's needles stinging his skin, learned how the nose can buzz with sand-itch and how to gather his body's precious moisture around him to guard it and preserve it. As his eyes assumed the blue of the Ibad, he learned the Chakobsa way.
-- Stilgar's preface to "Muad'Dib, the Man" by the Princess Irulan
The hands move, the lips move --
Ideas gush from his words,
And his eyes devour!
He is an island of Selfdom.
-- description from "A Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
No woman, no man, no child ever was deeply intimate with my father. The closest anyone ever came to casual camaraderie with the Padishah Emperor was the relationship offered by Count Hasimir Fenring, a companion from childhood. The measure of Count Fenring's friendship may be seen first in a positive thing: he allayed the Landsraad's suspicions after the Arrakis Affair. It cost more than a billion solaris in spice bribes, so my mother said, and there were other gifts as well: slave women, royal honors, and tokens of rank. The second major evidence of the Count's friendship was negative. He refused to kill a man even though it was within his capabilities and my father commanded it. I will relate this presently.
-"Count Fenring: A Profile" by the Princess Irulan
Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.
-- from "The Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
There is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe. It has symmetry, elegance, and grace -- those qualities you find always in that which the true artist captures. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, in the way sand trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of the creosote bush or the pattern of its leaves. We try to copy these patterns in our lives and our society, seeking the rhythms, the dances, the forms that comfort. Yet, it is possible to see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. It is clear that the ultimate pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all things move toward death.
-- from "The Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
"Control the coinage and the courts -- let the rabble have the rest." Thus the Padishah Emperor advises you. And he tells you: "If you want profits, you must rule." There is truth in these words, but I ask myself: "Who are the rabble and who are the ruled?"
-Muad'Dib's Secret Message to the Landsraad from "Arrakis Awakening" by the Princess Irulan
You cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion. This power struggle permeates the training, educating and disciplining of the orthodox community. Because of this pressure, the leaders of such a community inevitably must face that ultimate internal question: to succumb to complete opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing themselves for the sake of the orthodox ethic.
-- from "Muad'Dib: The Religious Issues" by the Princess Irulan
When law and duty are one, united by religion, you never become fully conscious, fully aware of yourself. You are always a little less than an individual.
-- from "Muad'Dib: The Ninety-Nine Wonders of the Universe" by Princess Irulan
How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him.
-- "The Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
And it came to pass in the third year of the Desert War that Paul-Muad'Dib lay alone in the Cave of Birds beneath the kiswa hangings of an inner cell. And he lay as one dead, caught up in the revelation of the Water of Life, his being translated beyond the boundaries of time by the poison that gives life. Thus was the prophecy made true that the Lisan al-Gaib might be both dead and alive.
-- "Collected Legends of Arrakis" by the Princess Irulan
And that day dawned when Arrakis lay at the hub of the universe with the wheel poised to spin.
-- from "Arrakis Awakening" by the Princess Irulan
And Muad'Dib stood before them, and he said: "Though we deem the captive dead, yet does she live. For her seed is my seed and her voice is my voice. And she sees unto the farthest reaches of possibility. Yea, unto the vale of the unknowable does she see because of me."
-- from "Arrakis Awakening" by the Princess Irulan
He was warrior and mystic, ogre and saint, the fox and the innocent, chivalrous, ruthless, less than a god, more than a man. There is no measuring Muad'Dib's motives by ordinary standards. In the moment of his triumph, he saw the death prepared for him, yet he accepted the treachery. Can you say he did this out of a sense of justice? Whose justice, then? Remember, we speak now of the Muad'Dib who ordered battle drums made from his enemies' skins, the Muad'Dib who denied the conventions of his ducal past with a wave of the hand, saying merely: "I am the Kwisatz Haderach. That is reason enough. "
-- from "Arrakis Awakening" by the Princess Irulan
Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans in the finite space of a planetary ecosystem as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.
-- Pardot Kynes, First Planetologist of Arrakis
Democracy is the pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. -- H.L.Menken
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods. -– H.L. Mencken
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist that black flag, and begin slitting throats. -- H.L. Mencken
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind. -- H.L. Mencken
The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. -- H.L. Mencken
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. -- H.L. Mencken
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right. -- H. L. Mencken
For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing. -- H.L. Mencken
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace in a continual state of alarm (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. -- H.L. Mencken
There's really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal. -- H.L. Mencken
We are at a cusp, a decision point. We can decide to go one way, to the stars, and enjoy unlimited opportunities, unimagined possibilities, endless evolution, and eternal racial life. Or we can refuse the challenge, stay where we are---and die. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter. -- William Ralph Inge
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer God than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible Gods, you will understand why I dismiss your -- Stephen F. Roberts
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. -- H. L. Mencken
If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you oughtta go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it's not for the timid. -- Q (Q Who?)
Does history record any case in which the majority was right? -- R. A. Heinlein
I love fools' experiments. I'm always making them. -- Charles Darwin
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away. -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Everything popular is wrong -- Oscar Wilde
Know the rules well, so that you can break them effectively. -- Dali Lama XIV
Even people who aren't geniuses can outthink the rest of mankind if they develop certain thinking habits. -- Charles Darwin
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings toal obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permt it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has there will be nothing. Only I will remain -- Ben Gesserit "Litany Against Fear"
Who is John Galt? -- Ayn Rand Who weeded John Galt's Victory Garden? NOT John Galt. -- me
There might be more than you believe
There might be more than you and me
There might be more than you can see -- Three Doors Down
I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife’s grave. Then I joined the army. - John Perry, Old Man's War
This is it. -- Sheldon Kopp
There are no hidden meanings. -- Sheldon Kopp
You can’t get there from here, and besides there is no place to go. -- Sheldon Kopp
We are already dying, and we’ll be dead a long time. -- Sheldon Kopp
Nothing lasts! -- Sheldon Kopp
There is no way of getting all you want. -- Sheldon Kopp
You can’t have anything unless you let go of it. -- Sheldon Kopp
You only get to keep what you give away. -- Sheldon Kopp
There is no particular reason why you lost out on some things. -- Sheldon Kopp
The world is not necessarily just. Being good often does not pay off and there’s no compensation for misfortune. -- Sheldon Kopp
You have the responsibility to do your best nonetheless. -- Sheldon Kopp
It’s a random universe to which we bring meaning. -- Sheldon Kopp
You really don’t control anything. -- Sheldon Kopp
You can’t make anyone love you. -- Sheldon Kopp
No one is any stronger or any weaker than anyone else. -- Sheldon Kopp
Everyone is, in his own way, vulnerable. -- Sheldon Kopp
There are no great men. -- Sheldon Kopp
If you have a hero, look again; you have diminished yourself in some way. -- Sheldon Kopp
Everyone lies, cheats, pretends. (yes, you too, and most certainly myself.) -- Sheldon Kopp
All evil is potentially vitality in need of transformation. -- Sheldon Kopp
All of you is worth something if you will only own it. -- Sheldon Kopp
Progress is an illusion. -- Sheldon Kopp
Evil can be displaced but never eradicated, as all solutions breed new problems. -- Sheldon Kopp
Yet it is necessary to keep struggling toward solution. -- Sheldon Kopp
Childhood is a nightmare. -- Sheldon Kopp
But it is so very hard to be an on-your-own, take-care-of-yourself-cause-there-is-no-one-else-to-do-it-for-you grown-up. -- Sheldon Kopp
Each of us is ultimately alone. -- Sheldon Kopp
The most important things each man must do for himself. -- Sheldon Kopp
Love is not enough, but it sure helps. -- Sheldon Kopp
We have only ourselves, and one another. That may not be much, but that’s all there is. -- Sheldon Kopp
How strange, that so often, it all seems worth it. -- Sheldon Kopp
We must live within the ambiguity of partial freedom, partial power, and partial knowledge. -- Sheldon Kopp
All important decisions must be made on the basis of insufficient data. -- Sheldon Kopp
Yet we are responsible for everything we do. -- Sheldon Kopp
No excuses will be accepted. -- Sheldon Kopp
You can run, but you can’t hide. -- Sheldon Kopp
It is most important to run out of scapegoats. -- Sheldon Kopp
We must learn the power of living with our helplessness. -- Sheldon Kopp
The only victory lies is in surrender to oneself. -- Sheldon Kopp
All of the significant battles are waged within the self. -- Sheldon Kopp
You are free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences. -- Sheldon Kopp
What do you know for sure…anyway? -- Sheldon Kopp
Learn to forgive yourself, again and again and again and again. -- Sheldon Kopp
Ignorance spreads lies
How much will money buy
Well I'll take my time
As I drift and die -- Puddle Of Mudd
A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular. -- Adlai Stevenson
I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark. -- Stephen Hawking
...those who wish to know in what direction they are going would do well to give their attention not to the politicians but to the philosophers, for what they propound today will be the faith of tomorrow. -- I.M. Bochenski (1902-1995)
Even if someone knew the entire physical history of the world, and every mental event were identical with a physical, it would not follow that he could predict or explain a single mental event (so described, of course). -- Donald Davidson (1917-2003)
We do not, in fact step out of the movement of things, ask ‘What am I to do’ and, having obtained an answer, step in again. All our actions, all our questionings and answerings, are part of the movement of things, and if we can work on things, things can work on us… -- John Anderson (1893-1962)
All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse. -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety. -- Aesop (620-560 BC)
And as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. -- Shakespeare (1564-1616)
A hidden connection is stronger than an obvious one. -- Heraclitus (c.536-470 BC)
It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible. -- Aristotle (384-322 BC)
When the mind is in a state of uncertainty the smallest impulse directs it to either side. -- Terence (195/185 – 159 BC)
Reasoning draws a conclusion and makes us grant the conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, nor does it remove doubt. -- Roger Bacon (c.1214-1292)
It’s quite true what philosophy says, that life must be understood backwards. But one then forgets the other principle, that it must be lived forwards. A principle which, the more one thinks it through, precisely leads to the conclusion that life in time can never be properly understood, just because no moment can acquire the complete stillness needed to orient oneself backward.-- Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
The crowd is untruth. -- Soren Kierkegaard(1813-1855)
Stubborn and ardent clinging to one’s opinion is the best proof of stupidity. -- Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)
If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading. -- Lau Tzu (fl. circa 600BC)
The creator stands on his own judgment. The parasite follows the opinions of others. -- Ayn Rand
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin
I'll believe a coporation is a person as soon as Texas executes (an innocent?) one.
The only function of economic forecasting is to make Astrology seem respectable -- John Kenneth Galbraith
“The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that it’s difficult to determine whether or not they are genuine” -– Abraham Lincoln
"Please, warm my weiner" -- Bo Carter http://youtu.be/GW0M2zEx-7g
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. -- 2nd law of Arthur C. Clarke
A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -- 3rd law of Arthur C. Clarke
Let the magic show begin! -- me
For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert -- 4th law of Arthur C. Clarke
For every PhD there is an equal and opposite PhD -- Gibson's Law
The meek shall inherit the earth. The rest of us are getting the hell off this rock! -- me
Maybe Jesus was right when he said that the meek shall inherit the earth -- but they inherit very small plots, about six feet by three. -- Lazarus Long (RAH)
186,000 miles/second. It's the law! -- Anonymous (Einstein?)
You're #1 in my book, too! -- Rosie
A good friend will bail you out of jail. A best friend will be sitting next to you saying 'Dude, that was awesome!' -- pshwd
Conservatism: The search for a moral justification of selfishness. -- Dean Booth
We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. -- Jonathan Swift
I hate housework. You make the beds, you wash the dishes, and six months later, you have to start all over again. -- Joan Rivers
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. -- Fight Club
"When was the last time you took LSD?" "I'm tripping now." -- Timothy Leary
I'm still an atheist, thank God. -- Luis Bunuel
To Serve Man - Gustatus similis pullus - Tastes like chicken!
The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church. -- Ferdinand Magellan
The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma. -- Abraham Lincoln
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear. -- Thomas Jefferson
Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis. -- Sigmund Freud
There is so much in the bible against which every insinct of my being rebels, so much so that I regret the necessity which has compelled me to read it through from beginning to end. -- Helen Keller
We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes. -- Gene Roddenberry
A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows. -- Samuel Clemens
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for a reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. -- Albert Einstein
It is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists and were religion not inculcated into their minds, they would remain so. -- Ernestine Rose
All thinking men are atheists. -- Ernest Hemingway
Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence. -- Richard Dawkins
The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion -- George Washington
Whenever... preachers, instead of a lesson in religion, put [their congregation] off with a discourse on the Copernican system, on chemical affinities, on the construction of government, or the characters or conduct of those administering it, it is a breach of contract, depriving their audience of the kind of service for which they are salaried, and giving them, instead of it, what they did not want, or, if wanted, would rather seek from better sources in that particular art of science. -- Thomas Jefferson to P. H. Wendover, 1815. ME 14:281
This will be the best security for maintaining our liberties. A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins. -- Benjamin Franklin
This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it -- John Adams
It does me know injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. -- Thomas Jefferson
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. -- Thomas Paine
I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature. -- Thomas Jefferson
Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I'll spend the first four hours sharpening my ax. -- Abraham Lincoln
There's a fine line between love and hate
And I don't mind
Just let me say that I like that
I like that -- Breaking Benjamin
I don't wanna change the world
I just wanna leave it colder -- Breaking Benjamin
Freedom of Press is limited to those who own one -- H.L. Mencken
No one really knows if she's drunk or if she's stoned, but she's
Comin' back to my place tonight! -- Theory of a Down
A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. To begin your study of the life of Muad'Dib, then, take care that you first place him in his time: born in the 57th year of the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV. And take the most special care that you locate Muad'Dib in his place: the planet Arrakis. Do not be deceived by the fact that he was born on Caladan and lived his first fifteen years there. Arrakis, the planet known as Dune, is forever his place.
-- from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
To attempt an understanding of Muad'Dib without understanding his mortal enemies, the Harkonnens, is to attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing Darkness. It cannot be.
-- from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
Thus spoke St. Alia-of-the-Knife: "The Reverend Mother must combine the seductive wiles of a courtesan with the untouchable majesty of a virgin goddess, holding these attributes in tension so long as the powers of her youth endure. For when youth and beauty have gone, she will find that the place-between, once occupied by tension, has become a wellspring of cunning and resourcefulness."
-- from "Muad'Dib, Family Commentaries" by the Princess Irulan
You have read that Muad'Dib had no playmates his own age on Caladan. The dangers were too great. But Muad'Dib did have wonderful companion-teachers. There was Gurney Halleck, the troubadour-warrior. You will sing some of Gurney's songs, as you read along in this book. There was Thufir Hawat, the old Mentat Master of Assassins, who struck fear even into the heart of the Padishah Emperor. There were Duncan Idaho, the Swordmaster of the Ginaz; Dr. Wellington Yueh, a name black in treachery but bright in knowledge; the Lady Jessica, who guided her son in the Bene Gesserit Way, and -- of course -- the Duke Leto, whose qualities as a father have long been overlooked.
-- from "A Child's History of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
YUEH (yu'e), Wellington (weling-tun), Stdrd 10,082-10,191; medical doctor of the Suk School (grd Stdrd 10,112); md: Wanna Marcus, B.G. (Stdrd 10,092-10,186?); chiefly noted as betrayer of Duke Leto Atreides. (Cf: Bibliography, Appendix VII [Imperial Conditioning] and Betrayal, The.)
-- from "Dictionary of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
How do we approach the study of Muad'Dib's father? A man of surpassing warmth and surprising coldness was the Duke Leto Atreides. Yet, many facts open the way to this Duke: his abiding love for his Bene Gesserit lady; the dreams he held for his son; the devotion with which men served him. You see him there -- a man snared by Destiny, a lonely figure with his light dimmed behind the glory of his son. Still, one must ask: What is the son but an extension of the father?
-- from "Muad'Dib, Family Commentaries" by the Princess Irulan
With the Lady Jessica and Arrakis, the Bene Gesserit system of sowing implant-legends through the Missionaria Protectiva came to its full fruition. The wisdom of seeding the known universe with a prophecy pattern for the protection of B.G. personnel has long been appreciated, but never have we seen a condition-ut-extremis with more ideal mating of person and preparation. The prophetic legends had taken on Arrakis even to the extent of adopted labels (including Reverend Mother, canto and respondu, and most of the Shari-a panoplia propheticus). And it is generally accepted now that the Lady Jessica's latent abilities were grossly underestimated.
-- from "Analysis: The Arrakeen Crisis" by the Princess Irulan [Private circulation: B.G. file number AR-81088587]
"Yueh! Yueh! Yueh!" goes the refrain. "A million deaths were not enough for Yueh!"
-- from "A Child's History of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
Many have marked the speed with which Muad'Dib learned the necessities of Arrakis. The Bene Gesserit, of course, know the basis of this speed. For the others, we can say that Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad'Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.
-- from "The Humanity of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
What had the Lady Jessica to sustain her in her time of trial? Think you carefully on this Bene Gesserit proverb and perhaps you will see: "Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain."
-- from "Muad'Dib: Family Commentaries" by the Princess Irulan
It is said that the Duke Leto blinded himself to the perils of Arrakis, that he walked heedlessly into the pit. Would it not be more likely to suggest he had lived so long in the presence of extreme danger he misjudged a change in its intensity? Or is it possible he deliberately sacrificed himself that his son might find a better life? All evidence indicates the Duke was a man not easily hoodwinked.
-- from "Muad'Dib: Family Commentaries" by the Princess Irulan
Over the exit of the Arrakeen landing field, crudely carved as though with a poor instrument, there was an inscription that Muad'Dib was to repeat many times. He saw it that first night on Arrakis, having been brought to the ducal command post to participate in his father's first full staff conference. The words of the inscription were a plea to those leaving Arrakis, but they fell with dark import on the eyes of a boy who had just escaped a close brush with death. They said: "O you who know what we suffer here, do not forget us in your prayers. "
-- from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
On that first day when Muad'Dib rode through the streets of Arrakeen with his family, some of the people along the way recalled the legends and the prophecy and they ventured to shout: "Mahdi!" But their shout was more a question than a statement, for as yet they could only hope he was the one foretold as the Lisan al-Gaib, the Voice from the Outer World. Their attention was focused, too, on the mother, because they had heard she was a Bene Gesserit and it was obvious to them that she was like the other Lisan al-Gaib.
-- from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
"There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man--with human flesh."
-- from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
My father, the Padishah Emperor, took me by the hand one day and I sensed in the ways my mother had taught me that he was disturbed. He led me down the Hall of Portraits to the ego-likeness of the Duke Leto Atreides. I marked the strong resemblance between them--my father and this man in the portrait--both with thin, elegant faces and sharp features dominated by cold eyes. "Princess-daughter," my father said, "I would that you'd been older when it came time for this man to choose a woman." My father was 71 at the time and looking no older than the man in the portrait, and I was but 14, yet I remember deducing in that instant that my father secretly wished the Duke had been his son, and disliked the political necessities that made them enemies.
-- "In My Father's House" by the Princess Irulan
Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.
-- from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
"There is no escape--we pay for the violence of our ancestors. "
-- from "The Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
Do you wrestle with dreams?
Do you contend with shadows?
Do you move in a kind of sleep?
Time has slipped away.
Your life is stolen.
You tarried with trifles,
Victim of your folly.
-- Dirge for Jamis on the Funeral Plain, from "Songs of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.
-- from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife--chopping off what's incomplete and saying: "Now, it's complete because it's ended here."
-- from "Collected Sayings of, Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
There is a legend that the instant the Duke Leto Atreides died a meteor streaked across the skies above his ancestral palace on Caladan.
-the Princess Irulan: "Introduction to A Child's History of Muad'Dib"
O Seas of Caladan,
O people of Duke Leto--
Citadel of Leto fallen,
Fallen forever . . .
-- from "Songs of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
When my father, the Padishah Emperor, heard of Duke Leto's death and the manner of it, he went into such a rage as we had never before seen. He blamed my mother and the compact forced on him to place a Bene Gesserit on the throne. He blamed the Guild and the evil old Baron. He blamed everyone in sight, not excepting even me, for he said I was a witch like all the others. And when I sought to comfort him, saying it was done according to an older law of self-preservation to which even the most ancient rulers gave allegiance, he sneered at me and asked if I thought him a weakling. I saw then that he had been aroused to this passion not by concern over the dead Duke but by what that death implied for all royalty. As I look back on it, I think there may have been some prescience in my father, too, for it is certain that his line and Muad'Dib's shared common ancestry.
-- "In My Father's House," by the Princess Irulan
My father once told me that respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. "Something cannot emerge from nothing," he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable "the truth" can be.
-- from "Conversations with Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
Muad'Dib could indeed, see the Future, but you must understand the limits of this power. Think of sight. You have eyes, yet cannot see without light. If you are on the floor of a valley, you cannot see beyond your valley. Just so, Muad'Dib could not always choose to look across the mysterious terrain. He tells us that a single obscure decision of prophecy, perhaps the choice of one word over another, could change the entire aspect of the future. He tells us "The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door." And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning "That path leads ever down into stagnation."
-- from "Arrakis Awakening" by the Princess Irulan
What do you despise? By this are you truly known.
-- from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
At the age of fifteen, he had already learned silence.
-- from "A Child's History of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
We came from Caladan--a paradise world for our form of fife. There existed no need on Caladan to build a physical paradise or a paradise of the mind--we could see the actuality all around us. And the price we paid was the price men have always paid for achieving a paradise in this life--we went soft, we lost our edge.
-- from "Muad'Dib: Conversations" by the Princess Irulan
Family life of the Royal Creche is difficult for many people to understand, but I shall try to give you a capsule view of it. My father had only one real friend, I think. That was Count Hasimir Fenring, the genetic-eunuch and one of the deadliest fighters in the Imperium. The Count, a dapper and ugly little man, brought a new slave-concubine to my father one day and I was dispatched by my mother to spy on the proceedings. All of us spied on my father as a matter of self-protection. One of the slave-concubines permitted my father under the Bene Gesserit-Guild agreement could not, of course, bear a Royal Successor, but the intrigues were constant and oppressive in their similarity. We became adept, my mother and sisters and I, at avoiding subtle instruments of death. It may seem a dreadful thing to say, but I 'm not at all sure my father was innocent in all these attempts. A Royal Family is not like other families. Here was a new slave-concubine, then, red-haired like my father, willowy and graceful. She had a dancer's muscles, and her training obviously had included neuro-enticement. My father looked at her for a long time as she postured unclothed before him. Finally he said: "She is too beautiful. We will save her as a gift. " You have no idea how much consternation this restraint created in the Royal Creche. Subtlety and self-control were, after all, the most deadly threats to us all.
-- "In My Father's House" by the Princess Irulan
Prophecy and prescience--How can they be put to the test in the face of the unanswered questions? Consider: How much is actual prediction of the "waveform" (as Muad'Dib referred to his vision-image) and how much is the prophet shaping the future to fit the prophecy? What of the harmonics inherent in the act of prophecy? Does the prophet see the future or does he see a line of weakness, a fault or cleavage that he may shatter with words or decisions as a diamond-cutter shatters his gem with a blow of a knife?
-- "Private Reflections on Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called "spannungsbogen"--which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.
-- from "The Wisdom of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
My father, the Padishah Emperor, was 72 yet looked no more than 35 the year he encompassed the death of Duke Leto and gave Arrakis back to the Harkonnens. He seldom appeared in public wearing other than a Sardaukar uniform and a Burseg's black helmet with the imperial lion in gold upon its crest. The uniform was an open reminder of where his power lay. He was not always that blatant, though. When he wanted, he could radiate charm and sincerity, but I often wonder in these later days if anything about him was as it seemed. I think now he was a man fighting constantly to escape the bars of an invisible cage. You must remember that he was an emperor, father-head of a dynasty that reached back into the dimmest history. But we denied him a legal son. Was this not the most terrible defeat a ruler ever suffered? My mother obeyed her Sister Superiors where the Lady Jessica disobeyed. Which of them was the stronger? History already has answered.
-- "In My Father's House" by the Princess Irulan
God created Arrakis to train the faithful.
-- from "The Wisdom of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.
-- from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
Muad'Dib tells us in "A Time of Reflection" that his first collisions with Arrakeen necessities were the true beginnings of his education. He learned then how to pole the sand for its weather, learned the language of the wind's needles stinging his skin, learned how the nose can buzz with sand-itch and how to gather his body's precious moisture around him to guard it and preserve it. As his eyes assumed the blue of the Ibad, he learned the Chakobsa way.
-- Stilgar's preface to "Muad'Dib, the Man" by the Princess Irulan
The hands move, the lips move --
Ideas gush from his words,
And his eyes devour!
He is an island of Selfdom.
-- description from "A Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
No woman, no man, no child ever was deeply intimate with my father. The closest anyone ever came to casual camaraderie with the Padishah Emperor was the relationship offered by Count Hasimir Fenring, a companion from childhood. The measure of Count Fenring's friendship may be seen first in a positive thing: he allayed the Landsraad's suspicions after the Arrakis Affair. It cost more than a billion solaris in spice bribes, so my mother said, and there were other gifts as well: slave women, royal honors, and tokens of rank. The second major evidence of the Count's friendship was negative. He refused to kill a man even though it was within his capabilities and my father commanded it. I will relate this presently.
-"Count Fenring: A Profile" by the Princess Irulan
Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.
-- from "The Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
There is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe. It has symmetry, elegance, and grace -- those qualities you find always in that which the true artist captures. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, in the way sand trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of the creosote bush or the pattern of its leaves. We try to copy these patterns in our lives and our society, seeking the rhythms, the dances, the forms that comfort. Yet, it is possible to see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. It is clear that the ultimate pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all things move toward death.
-- from "The Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
"Control the coinage and the courts -- let the rabble have the rest." Thus the Padishah Emperor advises you. And he tells you: "If you want profits, you must rule." There is truth in these words, but I ask myself: "Who are the rabble and who are the ruled?"
-Muad'Dib's Secret Message to the Landsraad from "Arrakis Awakening" by the Princess Irulan
You cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion. This power struggle permeates the training, educating and disciplining of the orthodox community. Because of this pressure, the leaders of such a community inevitably must face that ultimate internal question: to succumb to complete opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing themselves for the sake of the orthodox ethic.
-- from "Muad'Dib: The Religious Issues" by the Princess Irulan
When law and duty are one, united by religion, you never become fully conscious, fully aware of yourself. You are always a little less than an individual.
-- from "Muad'Dib: The Ninety-Nine Wonders of the Universe" by Princess Irulan
How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him.
-- "The Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
And it came to pass in the third year of the Desert War that Paul-Muad'Dib lay alone in the Cave of Birds beneath the kiswa hangings of an inner cell. And he lay as one dead, caught up in the revelation of the Water of Life, his being translated beyond the boundaries of time by the poison that gives life. Thus was the prophecy made true that the Lisan al-Gaib might be both dead and alive.
-- "Collected Legends of Arrakis" by the Princess Irulan
And that day dawned when Arrakis lay at the hub of the universe with the wheel poised to spin.
-- from "Arrakis Awakening" by the Princess Irulan
And Muad'Dib stood before them, and he said: "Though we deem the captive dead, yet does she live. For her seed is my seed and her voice is my voice. And she sees unto the farthest reaches of possibility. Yea, unto the vale of the unknowable does she see because of me."
-- from "Arrakis Awakening" by the Princess Irulan
He was warrior and mystic, ogre and saint, the fox and the innocent, chivalrous, ruthless, less than a god, more than a man. There is no measuring Muad'Dib's motives by ordinary standards. In the moment of his triumph, he saw the death prepared for him, yet he accepted the treachery. Can you say he did this out of a sense of justice? Whose justice, then? Remember, we speak now of the Muad'Dib who ordered battle drums made from his enemies' skins, the Muad'Dib who denied the conventions of his ducal past with a wave of the hand, saying merely: "I am the Kwisatz Haderach. That is reason enough. "
-- from "Arrakis Awakening" by the Princess Irulan
Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans in the finite space of a planetary ecosystem as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.
-- Pardot Kynes, First Planetologist of Arrakis
Democracy is the pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. -- H.L.Menken
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods. -– H.L. Mencken
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist that black flag, and begin slitting throats. -- H.L. Mencken
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind. -- H.L. Mencken
The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. -- H.L. Mencken
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. -- H.L. Mencken
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right. -- H. L. Mencken
For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing. -- H.L. Mencken
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace in a continual state of alarm (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. -- H.L. Mencken
There's really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal. -- H.L. Mencken
We are at a cusp, a decision point. We can decide to go one way, to the stars, and enjoy unlimited opportunities, unimagined possibilities, endless evolution, and eternal racial life. Or we can refuse the challenge, stay where we are---and die. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter. -- William Ralph Inge
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer God than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible Gods, you will understand why I dismiss your -- Stephen F. Roberts
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. -- H. L. Mencken
If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you oughtta go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it's not for the timid. -- Q (Q Who?)
Does history record any case in which the majority was right? -- R. A. Heinlein
I love fools' experiments. I'm always making them. -- Charles Darwin
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away. -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Everything popular is wrong -- Oscar Wilde
Know the rules well, so that you can break them effectively. -- Dali Lama XIV
Even people who aren't geniuses can outthink the rest of mankind if they develop certain thinking habits. -- Charles Darwin
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings toal obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permt it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has there will be nothing. Only I will remain -- Ben Gesserit "Litany Against Fear"
Who is John Galt? -- Ayn Rand Who weeded John Galt's Victory Garden? NOT John Galt. -- me
There might be more than you believe
There might be more than you and me
There might be more than you can see -- Three Doors Down
I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife’s grave. Then I joined the army. - John Perry, Old Man's War
This is it. -- Sheldon Kopp
There are no hidden meanings. -- Sheldon Kopp
You can’t get there from here, and besides there is no place to go. -- Sheldon Kopp
We are already dying, and we’ll be dead a long time. -- Sheldon Kopp
Nothing lasts! -- Sheldon Kopp
There is no way of getting all you want. -- Sheldon Kopp
You can’t have anything unless you let go of it. -- Sheldon Kopp
You only get to keep what you give away. -- Sheldon Kopp
There is no particular reason why you lost out on some things. -- Sheldon Kopp
The world is not necessarily just. Being good often does not pay off and there’s no compensation for misfortune. -- Sheldon Kopp
You have the responsibility to do your best nonetheless. -- Sheldon Kopp
It’s a random universe to which we bring meaning. -- Sheldon Kopp
You really don’t control anything. -- Sheldon Kopp
You can’t make anyone love you. -- Sheldon Kopp
No one is any stronger or any weaker than anyone else. -- Sheldon Kopp
Everyone is, in his own way, vulnerable. -- Sheldon Kopp
There are no great men. -- Sheldon Kopp
If you have a hero, look again; you have diminished yourself in some way. -- Sheldon Kopp
Everyone lies, cheats, pretends. (yes, you too, and most certainly myself.) -- Sheldon Kopp
All evil is potentially vitality in need of transformation. -- Sheldon Kopp
All of you is worth something if you will only own it. -- Sheldon Kopp
Progress is an illusion. -- Sheldon Kopp
Evil can be displaced but never eradicated, as all solutions breed new problems. -- Sheldon Kopp
Yet it is necessary to keep struggling toward solution. -- Sheldon Kopp
Childhood is a nightmare. -- Sheldon Kopp
But it is so very hard to be an on-your-own, take-care-of-yourself-cause-there-is-no-one-else-to-do-it-for-you grown-up. -- Sheldon Kopp
Each of us is ultimately alone. -- Sheldon Kopp
The most important things each man must do for himself. -- Sheldon Kopp
Love is not enough, but it sure helps. -- Sheldon Kopp
We have only ourselves, and one another. That may not be much, but that’s all there is. -- Sheldon Kopp
How strange, that so often, it all seems worth it. -- Sheldon Kopp
We must live within the ambiguity of partial freedom, partial power, and partial knowledge. -- Sheldon Kopp
All important decisions must be made on the basis of insufficient data. -- Sheldon Kopp
Yet we are responsible for everything we do. -- Sheldon Kopp
No excuses will be accepted. -- Sheldon Kopp
You can run, but you can’t hide. -- Sheldon Kopp
It is most important to run out of scapegoats. -- Sheldon Kopp
We must learn the power of living with our helplessness. -- Sheldon Kopp
The only victory lies is in surrender to oneself. -- Sheldon Kopp
All of the significant battles are waged within the self. -- Sheldon Kopp
You are free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences. -- Sheldon Kopp
What do you know for sure…anyway? -- Sheldon Kopp
Learn to forgive yourself, again and again and again and again. -- Sheldon Kopp
Ignorance spreads lies
How much will money buy
Well I'll take my time
As I drift and die -- Puddle Of Mudd
A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular. -- Adlai Stevenson
I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark. -- Stephen Hawking
...those who wish to know in what direction they are going would do well to give their attention not to the politicians but to the philosophers, for what they propound today will be the faith of tomorrow. -- I.M. Bochenski (1902-1995)
Even if someone knew the entire physical history of the world, and every mental event were identical with a physical, it would not follow that he could predict or explain a single mental event (so described, of course). -- Donald Davidson (1917-2003)
We do not, in fact step out of the movement of things, ask ‘What am I to do’ and, having obtained an answer, step in again. All our actions, all our questionings and answerings, are part of the movement of things, and if we can work on things, things can work on us… -- John Anderson (1893-1962)
All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse. -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety. -- Aesop (620-560 BC)
And as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. -- Shakespeare (1564-1616)
A hidden connection is stronger than an obvious one. -- Heraclitus (c.536-470 BC)
It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible. -- Aristotle (384-322 BC)
When the mind is in a state of uncertainty the smallest impulse directs it to either side. -- Terence (195/185 – 159 BC)
Reasoning draws a conclusion and makes us grant the conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, nor does it remove doubt. -- Roger Bacon (c.1214-1292)
It’s quite true what philosophy says, that life must be understood backwards. But one then forgets the other principle, that it must be lived forwards. A principle which, the more one thinks it through, precisely leads to the conclusion that life in time can never be properly understood, just because no moment can acquire the complete stillness needed to orient oneself backward.-- Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
The crowd is untruth. -- Soren Kierkegaard(1813-1855)
Stubborn and ardent clinging to one’s opinion is the best proof of stupidity. -- Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)
If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading. -- Lau Tzu (fl. circa 600BC)
The creator stands on his own judgment. The parasite follows the opinions of others. -- Ayn Rand
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin
I'll believe a coporation is a person as soon as Texas executes (an innocent?) one.
The only function of economic forecasting is to make Astrology seem respectable -- John Kenneth Galbraith
“The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that it’s difficult to determine whether or not they are genuine” -– Abraham Lincoln
"Please, warm my weiner" -- Bo Carter http://youtu.be/GW0M2zEx-7g