All Quotes

"Unfortunately, some wars are won by the side that is the most fanatical in a religious sense. The victorious leaders harness the holy energy of collective insanity."

"We are fools to think the battle is ever over. A defeated foe can delude us into letting down our guard... to our eternal sorrow."

"There are a million ways to ask the same question, and a million ways to answer it."

"With all the artillery, ships and manpower in the military, our commanders often forget that ideas can be the greatest weapon of all."

"Even victories take their toll on a man."

"Those who refuse to fight against thinking machines are traitors to the human race. Those who do not use every possible weapon are fools."

"The more I study the phenomenon of human creativity, the more mysterious it seems. Their whole process of innovation is elusive, but is critical for us to understand. If we fail in this endeavor, thinking machines are doomed."

"Where one person sees cause of rejoicing, another sees only reason for despair. Pray that you are the former."

"For all their computerized precision, thinking machines can be confused in many different ways."

"Sand keeps the skin clean, and the mind."

"Human beings can always improve themselves. This is one of the advantages they have over thinking machines... until I find the way to mimic all of their senses. And sensibilities."

"He who strikes fastest strikes twice."

"Words are magic."

"Thoughts become weapons. Philosophies are distinct reasons for war. Good intentions are the most destructive arsenal of all."

"It is better to be envied than pitied."

"The army fosters technology, and technology breeds anarchy because it distributes the terrible machines of destruction. Even before this Jihad, one man alone could create and apply enough violence to ravage an entire planet. It happened! Why do you think the computer became anathema?"

"There is a certain momentum to victory...and to defeat."

"Good intentions can bring about as much destruction as an evil conqueror. Either way, the result is the same."

"War: A manufactory that produces desolation, death, and secrets."

"The gravest error a thinking person can make is to believe that one particular version of history is absolute fact. History is recorded by a series of observers, none of whom is impartial. The facts are distorted by sheer passage of time and — especially in the case of the Butlerian Jihad — thousands of years of humanity's dark ages, deliberate misrepresentations by religious sects, and the inevitable corruption that comes from an accumulation of careless mistakes. The wise person, then, views history as a set of lessons to be learned, choices and ramifications to be considered and discussed, and mistakes that should never again be made."

"It has often been said that it is better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven. This is defeatist talk: I intend to rule everywhere, not just in Hell."

"In truth, is it better to remember or to forget? We must balance this decision between our history and our humanity."

"When others place impossible expectations on a man, he must redefine his goals, and forge his own path. That way at least someone is satisfied."

"No one is ever completely forced into his position in life. We all have opportunities to take different paths."

"Memories and lies are painful. But my memories are not lies."

"Our most effective costumes are the assumptions and preconceptions the audience has about us."

"It is said that one can neither play nor hear the true beauty of music without first having experienced considerable pain. Alas, that may be why I find music to be so sweet."

"There are countless definitions and interpretations of a life well spent, and of the opposite. There are often widely divergent biographies of a particular person. The same individual can be either demon or saint, and even shades of both."

"Sometimes the best way to search is to be found."

"The greatest obligation of a mother is to support her children, to show them love and respect, and to accept them. Sometimes this is a most difficult task."

"When the true motive is love, there are no other explanations. Searching for them is like chasing grains of sand in the wind."

"Frank Herbert"

"Dune Messiah"

"Children of Dune"

"God Emperor of Dune"

"Heretics of Dune"

"Chapterhouse Dune"

"Briefly, the scientists working the Oregon coast found that sand could be controlled only by the use of one type of grass (European beach grass) and by a system of follow-up plantings with other growth. The grass sets up a beachhead by holding down the sand in an intricate lacing of roots. This permits certain other plants to gain a foothold. The beach grass is extremely difficult to grow in nurseries, and part of the solution to the dune problem involved working out a system for propagating and handling the grass."

"This group is composed of those for whom belief in saucers is tantamount to religion...They believe men from outer space will step in on Earth "before it's too late," put a stop to the atomic bomb threat "by their superior powers," and enforce perpetual peace "for the good of the universe"..."

"It's rooted in the fears to which all men are heir and, thus, deserves sympathy, not censure or laughter. The dream may be out of touch with history, but it's a good dream, and it doesn't appear to have been used to bilk gullible widows out of their savings. Never mind that we have a consistent record of slaughtering our messiahs. Look beyond the wacky arguments to the motivation — that sense of brotherhood which is all that has ever saved mankind from going over the brink."

"The thing we must do intensely is be human together. People are more important than things. We must get together. The best thing humans can have going for them is each other. We have each other. We must reject everything which humiliates us. Humans are not objects of consumption. We must develop an absolute priority of humans ahead of profit — any humans ahead of any profit. Then we will survive. … Together."

"There are no uncharted isles here where we can run away to sunshine and sparkling white beaches. We have just this one world, and on these pages we're beginning to get a feeling for the gigantic physical project confronting us. Our awakening is touched with dismay; we must come to terms with this world or it will terminate us. When we speak of defending the environment, we are speaking of defending our own lives."

"Ecology is a dirty seven-letter word to many people. They are like heavy sleepers refusing to be aroused. "Leave me alone! It's not time to get up yet!""

"[S]omebody said that ecology is the science of understanding consequences."

"There is no real ending. It's just the place where you stop the story."

"When I was quite young... I began to suspect there must be flaws in my sense of reality. It seemed to my dim sense of confusion that things often blended one into another, and the Law of Excluded Middle merely opened up a void wherein anything was possible. But I had been produced to focus on objects (things) and not on systems (processes)."

"If we define Futurism as an exploration beyond accepted limits, then the nature of limiting systems becomes the first object of exploration."

"The current utopian ideal being touted by people as politically diverse (on the surface, but not underneath) as President Richard M. Nixon and Senator Edward M. Kennedy goes as follows — no deeds of passion allowed, no geniuses, no criminals, no imaginative creators of the new. Satisfaction may be gained only in carefully limited social interactions, in living off the great works of the past. There must be limits to any excitement. Drug yourself into a placid "norm." Moderation is the key word…"

"By the time we awaken faintly to the awareness that we have been socially conditioned, we find ourselves so indoctrinated that it's difficult, if not impossible, to break the old patterns … Survival pressures demanding that we evolve, grow, and change, however, continue to proliferate. We don't want to change, but the floodgates open abruptly and we are overwhelmed. Crisis!"

"Science fiction, because it ventures into no man's lands, tends to meet some of the requirements posed by Jung in his explorations of archetypes, myth structures and self-understanding. It may be that the primary attraction of science fiction is that it helps us understand what it means to be human."