Nick Saunders > Nick's Quotes

“Education is no substitute for intelligence.”
― Frank Herbert

“A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“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.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“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 Maud'Dib'' by the Princess Irulan”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Most civilisation is based on cowardice. It's so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame.”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“The truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it.”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“When I need to identify rebels, I look for men with principles”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“Most men go through life unchallenged, except at the final moment.”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“Police are inevitably corrupted. ... Police always observe that criminals prosper. It takes a pretty dull policeman to miss the fact that the position of authority is the most prosperous criminal position available.”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“Most believe that a satisfactory future requires a return to an idealized past, a past which never in fact existed.”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“It's very difficult convincing the young of anything. They're born knowing so much.”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“Each of us comes into being knowing who he is and what he is supposed to do.' ... 'Small children know,' Leto said. 'It's only after adults have confused them that children hide this knowledge even from themselves.”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“Duncan, have I not told you that when you think you know something, that is a most perfect barrier against learning?”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“These are strange words, m’Lord. How do I take their meaning?” “Their meaning is whatever speaks to you. Are you incapable of listening?” “I have ears, m’Lord!” “Do you now? I cannot see them.” “Here, m’lord. Here and here!” Idaho pointed at his own ears as he spoke. “But they do not hear. Therefore you have no ears, neither here nor hear.” “You make a joke of me, m’Lord?” “To hear is to hear. That which exists cannot be made into itself for it already exists. To be is to be.” “Your strange words . . .” “Are but words. I spoke them. They are gone. No one heard them, therefore they no longer exist. If they no longer exist, perhaps they can be made to exist again and then perhaps someone will hear them.” “Why do you poke fun at me, m’Lord?” “I poke nothing at you except words. I do it without fear of offending because I have learned that you have no ears.” “I don’t understand you, m’Lord.” “That is the beginning of knowledge—the discovery of something we do not understand.”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“What is this forgiveness you ask? Must you always require judgment? Can’t your universe merely be?”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“there are words that cover up the world.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“The problem of leadership is inevitably: Who will play God?"
Muad'Dib”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“Duncan, eat your wafer,”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“Be deaf! You do not need to hear or, hearing, you do not need to remember. How soothing it is to forget. And how dangerous”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“Is Moneo your friend, too?” “We are friends of the stomach. We both like yogurt.”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love. This is something else I've discovered for myself very recently. I present it to you as a hypothesis: Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis. And I say that the mind absorbed in and involved in itself as a self-centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships, can only lead to violence and pain.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“Why am I always looking at life through a window?”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“I see now that the path I choose through the maze makes me what I am. I am not only a thing, but also a way of being—one of many ways—and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to take will help me understand what I am becoming.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“P.S. please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“So this is how a person can come to despise himself-knowing he's doing the wrong thing and not being able to stop.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“And now - Plato's words mock me in the shadows on the ledge behind the flames: '...the men of the cave would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“People resent being shown that they don't approach the complexities of the problem - they don't know what exists beyond the surface ripples.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“I can't help but admire the structural linguists who have carved out for
themselves a linguistic discipline based on the deterioration of written
communication. Another case of men devoting their lives to studying more and more about less and less-filling volumes and libraries with the subtle linguistic analysis of the grunt.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night