Themes

"I can't wait to get out of this chickenshit outfit."

"Let us leave our old friend in one of those moments of unmixed happiness which, if we seek them, there are ever some, to cheer our transitory existence here. There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast. (896)"

"A bird is the swiftest, a tortoise the slowest of animals : the blood of a bird is remarkable for its heat and the briskness with which it circulates, that of a tortoise for its coldness and sluggishness : the respiration of a bird is remarkable for its perfection, that of a tortoise for its imperfection : a bird is most susceptible of hunger and thirst, a tortoise most enduring : a bird is most readily killed, a tortoise most tenacious of life. The Almighty has scarcely created animals whose characters present so complete a contrast."

"Of several colors, all equally white, that will look whitest which is against the darkest background. And black will look intensest against the whitest background. And red will look most vivid against the yellowest background; and the same is the case with all colours when surrounded by their strongest contrasts."

"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."

"O mischief, thou art swift To enter in the thoughts of desperate men!"

"Now let it work: Mischief, thou art afoot, Take thou what course thou wilt."

"When to mischief mortals bend their will, How soon they find it instruments of ill."

"Let them call it mischief: When it is past and prospered 'twill be virtue."

"What plaguy mischief and mishaps Do dog him still with after claps!"

"In life it is difficult to say who do you the most mischief, enemies with the worst intentions, or friends with the best."

"The only punishment of those who oppose God and His Messenger and strive to make mischief on the earth is that they should be executed, or crucified, or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides, or they should be imprisoned. This shall he a disgrace for them in this world, and in the Hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement. Except those who repent before you overpower them; so know that Allah is Forgiving, Merciful."

"It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime."

"If the Government takes into its hands that which the man ought to do for himself it will inflict upon him greater mischiefs than all the benefits he will have received or all the advantages that would accrue from them. The essence of the whole thing is that the spirit of self-reliance, the spirit of true and genuine manly independence, should be preserved in the minds of the people, in the minds of the masses of the people, in the mind of every member of the class. If he loses his self-denial, if he learns to live in a craven dependence upon wealthier people rather than upon himself, you may depend upon it he incurs mischief for which no compensation can be made."

"In a word, he had a head to contrive, and a tongue to persuade, and a hand to execute, any mischieve, and his death appeared to be a great deliverance to the nation."

"It is impossible for the Court to foresee when a sentence begins how it will end, and, sometimes, mischief is done before we are sure that the sentence will conclude in an offensive manner."

"As the sun arising in the horizon shews not the figure so clear, as when it is beholden in the meridian; so by mixing many impertinences with the case in judgment, it hath been apprehended to be of a far tenderer consequence than indeed it is: yet tender and weighty it is."

"And the law says, better is a mischief than an inconvenience. By a mischief is meant, when one man or some few men suffer by the hardship of a law, which law is yet useful for the public. But an inconvenience is to have a public law disobeyed or broken, or an offence to go unpunished."

"It is a general rule of Judgment, that a mischief should rather be admitted than an inconvenience."

"The policy of the law of England, and indeed the true principles of all government, will rather suffer many private inconveniences, than introduce one public mischief."

"Certainty is the mother of repose, and therefore the common law aims at certainty."

"Certainty is the mother of quiet, which is the end of the law, and tho' it falls out that some particular cases may light very hard, yet better that mischief than an inconvenience."

"To mourn a mischief that is past and gone Is the next way to draw new mischief on."

"APPLAUSE, n. The echo of a platitude."

"Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones."

"Popular Applause! what heart of man Is proof against thy sweet, seducing charms?"

"Anybody's applause is better than nobody’s."

"The applause of a single human being is of great consequence."

"I live for the applause, applause, applause I live for the applause-plause, live for the applause-plause Live for the way that you cheer and scream for me The applause, applause, applause."

"The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world, is the highest applause."

"Vos valete et plaudite."

"Like Cato, give his little senate laws, And sit attentive to his own applause."

"Doubt is useful, it keeps faith a living thing. After all, you cannot know the strength of your faith until it has been tested."

"How beautiful is candor! All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor."

"Candor and generosity, unless tempered by due moderation, leads to ruin."

"Candor is always a double-edged sword; it may heal or it may separate."

"Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities."

"Noble souls, whose brightness the greed of fortune cannot dim, have a kingly something, which urges them to contend on equal footing with persons of the most massive dignity and pits freedom of speech against arrogance."

"Candor is a compliment; it implies equality. It's how true friends talk."

"It seems to me that even the bluntest word, the bluntest letter is still more good-natured, still more honest, than silence. . . . All who remain silent are dyspeptic. Clearly I would not have bluntness underestimated: it is by far the most humane form of contradiction and, amid modern pampering, one of our foremost virtues."

"The one who uses parrhesia, the parrhesiastes, is someone who says everything he has in mind: he does not hide anything, but opens his heart and mind completely to other people through his discourse. In parrhesia, the speaker is supposed to give a complete and exact account of what he has in mind so that the audience is able to comprehend exactly what the speaker thinks. The word "parrhesia" then, refers to a type of relationship between the speaker and what he says. For in parrhesia, the speaker makes it manifestly clear and obvious that what he says is his own opinion. And he does this by avoiding any kind of rhetorical form which would veil what he thinks. Instead, the parrhesiastes uses the most direct words and forms of expression he can find. Whereas rhetoric provides the speaker with technical devices to help him prevail upon the minds of his audience (regardless of the rhetorician's own opinion concerning what he says), in parrhesia, the parrhesiastes acts on other people's mind by showing them as directly as possible what he actually believes."

"Candor is a proof of both a just frame of mind, and of a good tone of breeding. It is a quality that belongs, equally to the honest man and to the gentleman: to the first, as doing to others as we would ourselves be done by; to the last, as indispensable to the liberality of the character. By candor we are not to understand trifling and uncalled for expositions of truth; but a sentiment that proves a conviction of the necessity of speaking truth, when speaking at all; a contempt for all designing evasions of our real opinions; and a deep conviction that he who deceives by necessary implication, deceives willfully. In all the general concerns, the publick has a right to be treated with candor. Without this manly and truly republican quality, republican because no power exists in the country to intimidate any from its exhibition, the institutions are converted into a stupendous fraud."

"All submit to them where they sit, inner, secure, unapproachable to analysis in the soul, Not traditions, not the outer authorities are the judges, They are the judges of outer authorities and of all traditions, They corroborate as they go only whatever corroborates themselves, and touches themselves; For all that, they have it forever in themselves to corroborate far and near without one exception."

"There was a lot of protest after Bravo, from countries like India, for example. India was the first country which came forward and proposed at the United Nations that all of these nuclear tests should be stopped, that there should be a complete ban on nuclear testing."

"As far as I can see, this is a system that has enriched multiple companies and that pays and fires teachers with a cattle birthing formula, confuses children with talking pineapples, and has the same kind of rules regarding transparency as Brad Pitt had for Fight Club."

"Don't tell us that the only way to teach a child is to spend too much of a year preparing him to fill out a few bubbles on a standardized test; we know that's not true."

"I agree as to the doubtful value of competitive examination. The qualities which you really want, viz., self-control, self-reliance, habits of accurate thought, integrity and what you generally call trustworthiness, are not decided by competitive examination, which test little else than the memory."

"Most people can bear adversity; but if you wish to know what a man really is give him power. This is the supreme test. It is the glory of Lincoln that, having almost absolute power, he never used it except on the side of mercy."

"Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment. . . . Humanity is in "final exam" as to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in Universe."

"This conference was worse than a Rorschach test: There's a meaningless inkblot, and the others ask you what you think you see, but when you tell them, they start arguing with you!"