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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 5c3dfef | Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them." " 'Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind," | Frank Herbert | ||
| 08ba6ed | You know the myth of the Great Spice Hoard? Yes, I know about that story, too. A majordomo brought it to me one day to amuse me. The story says there is a hoard of melange, a gigantic hoard, big as a great mountain. The hoard is concealed in the depths of a distant planet. It is not Arrakis, that planet. It is not Dune. The spice was hidden there long ago, even before the First Empire and the Spacing Guild. The story says Paul-Muad'Dib went.. | Frank Herbert | ||
| bf55f72 | The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows--a wall against the wind. This is the willow's purpose. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 4d18335 | it's a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, those things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. We tend to flounder around, blaming everything but the actual, deep-seated thing that's really chewing on us. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 40d413f | Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part on 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. | leadership storytelling | Frank Herbert | |
| c12cc32 | God created Arrakis to train the faithful. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 5597a83 | 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. -- | Frank Herbert | ||
| 5bdd351 | There's always a prevailing mystique in any civilization," Leto said. "It builds itself as a barrier against change, and that always leaves future generations unprepared for the universe's treachery. All mystiques are the same in building these barriers--the religious mystique, the hero-leader mystique, the messiah mystique, the mystique of science/technology, and the mystique of nature itself. We live in an Imperium which such a mystique h.. | Frank Herbert | ||
| d7e73bc | People, not commercial organizations or chains of command, are what make great civilizations work. Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness--they cannot work and their civilization collapses. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 4d569ea | Questions are my enemies. For my questions explode! | Frank Herbert | ||
| fe68829 | Major flaws in government arise from a fear of making radical internal changes even though a need is clearly seen. --Darwi Odrade | Frank Herbert | ||
| 8380434 | But oh, the perils of leadership in a species so anxious to be told what to do. How little they knew of what they created by their demands. Leaders made mistakes. And those mistakes, amplified by the numbers who followed without questioning, moved inevitably toward great disasters. | disaster error follow hierarchy human imperfection leadership mistakes | Frank Herbert | |
| b9b52aa | Life is not an option, it is a gift. Death is the option. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 49ee2a4 | Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit. This is the fine point on which all the legal professions of history have based their job security. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 694a60c | But the tripod upon which Eternity swings is composed of flesh and thought and emotion. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 09a2a15 | Gods need take no responsibility for anything except genesis. Gods accept everything and thus accept nothing. Gods must be identifiable yet remain anonymous. Gods do not need a spirit world. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 80bec9c | It's a beautiful morning, Sire," the guard said "Yes, it is." The Duke nodded, thinking: Perhaps this planet could grow on one. Perhaps it could ba a good home for my son. Then he saw the human figures moving into the flower fields, sweeping with them strange scythe-like devices--dew gatherers. Water so precious here that even the dew must be collected. And it could be a hideous place, the Duke thought." -- | Frank Herbert | ||
| 02f01c0 | No matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no matter the developments of life and society nor the complexity of the machine/ human interface, there always come interludes of lonely power when the course of humankind, the very future of humankind, depends upon the relatively simple actions of single individuals. --FROM THE TLEILAXU GODBUK | Frank Herbert | ||
| 16aa6d5 | Ever think of introducing yourself?" Y.T. says. "Nah," he says, "people always forget names. You can just think of me as that one guy, y'know?" | name snow-crash y-t | Neal Stephenson | |
| 8116ff0 | urges do not matter; only actions do. A warrior is as a warrior does. At | Dan Millman | ||
| e8dbf20 | War did not just level, it plowed the field, raising the muck and sinking the stubble. | Neal Stephenson | ||
| 8a162d0 | So which theory did Lagos believe in? The relativist or the universalist?" "He did not seem to think there was much of a difference. In the end, they are both somewhat mystical. Lagos believed that both schools of thought had essentially arrived at the same place by different lines of reasoning." "But it seems to me there is a key difference," Hiro says. "The universalists think that we are determined by the prepatterned structure of our br.. | Neal Stephenson | ||
| 235af44 | to insist on everything's being reasonable, in a world that wasn't, was, in itself, unreasonable. | Neal Stephenson | ||
| 3b69838 | Earth looked as if some god had attacked it with a welder's torch, slashing away at it and leaving thin trails of incandescence. | Neal Stephenson | ||
| 1ceab6a | and nothing was worse than getting stuck in a situation like that with nothing to read. | Neal Stephenson | ||
| d7b74aa | No one thought about the big picture for a few thousand years. We were all scrambling to survive. | Neal Stephenson | ||
| 7e7f5c2 | Tav started it," Aida said. "He ate his own leg. Soft cannibalism, he called it. Legs are of no use in space. He blogged it. Then it went viral." | Neal Stephenson | ||
| 42663d5 | Every parent of a teenager gets used to it: the moment in a child's life when he or she decides that certain facts are just too much trouble to explain to Mom or Dad. The parents can't, and needn't, know every last little thing. They just have to accept this, be content with what they can glean on their own, and move on. | Neal Stephenson | ||
| 1293b85 | I'm ready to commit to her at any time. But for god's sake, I'm not even sure she's heterosexual. It'd be madness to put a lesbian in charge of my ejaculatory functions. | homosexuality love relationships | Neal Stephenson | |
| f52a9e9 | A Kourier has to establish space on the pavement. Predictable law-abiding behavior lulls drivers. They mentally assign you to a little box in the lane, assume you will stay there, can't handle it when you leave that little box. | Neal Stephenson | ||
| 0a886f2 | Many a ship's officer, caught in a storm or battle, and seized by a natural tendency to freeze up in terror, was moved to action by the vivid helplessness of his crew. | Neal Stephenson | ||
| 59de045 | For most of the day and night, time oppresses me. It is only when I am at work on the innards of a clock-or a lock-that time stops." "The clock stops, you mean." "No. Time stops, or so it seems. I do not sense its passage. Then something interrupts me-I become aware that my bladder is full, my mouth dry, my stomach rumbling, the fire's gone out, and the sun's gone down. But there before me on the table is a finished clock-" now suddenly a s.. | Neal Stephenson | ||
| b8599a0 | Space and Time! Two minor omissions that no one is likely to notice," grumbled Newton." | Neal Stephenson | ||
| b1ec95e | Don Donald was clearly accustomed to addressing people whose only way of responding was to nod worshipfully and take notes. | Neal Stephenson | ||
| 50cd7f3 | Actually, I've been thinking about that," Tristan said, and finally sat down again. "It's the dog that didn't bark." | Neal Stephenson | ||
| a416b28 | while people were not genetically different, they were culturally as different as they could possibly be, and that some cultures were simply better than others. | Neal Stephenson | ||
| e21b01b | Donald Cameron has his own character in the world now!?" Skeletor exclaimed, in somewhat the same tone of voice as a tribune might have said, Hannibal has crossed the Alps with elephants!?" | Neal Stephenson | ||
| 22ef6a7 | The Victorian era was an age of superlatives and larger-than-life characters, and as far as that goes, Dr. Wildman Whitehouse fit right in: what Victoria was to monarchs, Dickens to novelists, Burton to explorers, Robert E. Lee to generals, Dr. Wildman Whitehouse was to assholes. The only 19th-century figure who even comes close to him in this department is Custer. | Neal Stephenson | ||
| f1cfb40 | I'll buy it right now, Jack," said an English voice, somehow familiar, "if you stop being such a fucking tosser, that is." | Neal Stephenson | ||
| ca9f508 | Maybe this was all down to some supernatural effect, such as grace, that flowed through people's lives even if they didn't understand why. | Neal Stephenson | ||
| b077b01 | Clyde had a theory that women had a book, a homemade, photocopied three-ring binder called "Surprising Things to Do in a Relationship," which they passed around to one another, adding pages from time to time, hiding it under the bed. He figured that Desiree could run home tonight and add a new page." | Neal Stephenson | ||
| 9a87635 | The first woman who spent any amount of time aboard this ship was Elizabeth de Obregon, whom we salvaged from the wrack of the Manila Galleon at the same time as him who burned it, one Edouard de Gex." "He's dead, by the way." "Again? I am glad to hear it." | Neal Stephenson | ||
| 4244cb1 | Hiro's father, who was stationed in Japan for many years, was obsessed with cameras. He kept bringing them back from his stints in the Far East, encased in many protective layers, so that when he took them out to show Hiro, it was like watching an exquisite striptease as they emerged from all that black leather and nylon, zippers and straps. And once the lens was finally exposed, pure geometric equation made real, so powerful and vulnerable.. | Neal Stephenson | ||
| f762724 | It's just like the reviews promised--other people's ordinariness is more rewarding than your own. Their banality is soothing to your own sense of failure. Because being you is so much more interesting than being me. | Neal Stephenson |