David Logan > David's Quotes

“To come under siege, he decided, was the inevitable fate of power.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world”
― Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

“You must understand that there is more than one path to the top of the mountain”
― Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

“Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

“The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings

“All man are the same except for their belief in their own selves, regardless of what others may think of them”
― Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

“You should not have any special fondness for a particular weapon, or anything else, for that matter. Too much is the same as not enough. Without imitating anyone else, you should have as much weaponry as suits you.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings

“Perception is strong and sight weak. In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.”
― Miyamoto Musashi

“Respect Buddha and the gods without counting on their help”
― Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

“If you know the way broadly you will see it in everything.”
― Miyamoto Musashi

“The true science of martial arts means practicing them in such a way that they will be useful at any time, and to teach them in such a way that they will be useful in all things.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings: Miyamoto Musashi

“If one's actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Patience is always rewarded and romance is always round the corner!”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?”
― Ayn Rand

“It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“What is man? He's just a collection of chemicals with delusions of grandeur.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“That love is reverence, and worship, and glory, and the upward glance. Not a bandage for dirty sores. But they don’t know it. Those who speak of love most promiscuously are the ones who’ve never felt it. They make some sort of feeble stew out of sympathy, compassion, contempt, and general indifference, and they call it love. Once you’ve felt what it means to love as you and I know it – the total passion for the total height – you’re incapable of anything less.”
― Ayn Rand

“He also said that he marvelled that among the Greeks, those who were skilful in a thing contend together; but those who have no such skill act as judges of the contest.”
― Diogenes Laërtius, Complete Works

“The past may show the right way to behave if you live in the past, Stil, but circumstances change.”
― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

“The only way to do all the things you'd like to do is to read”
― Tom Clancy

“The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.”
― Tom Clancy

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit 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 gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.”
― Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune

“Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class - whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.
- Politics as Repeat Phenomenon: Bene Gesserit Training Manual”
― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

“Good governance never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders.”
― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

“One learns from books and example only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things.”
― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

“When I am Weaker Thn You, I ask you for Freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am Stronger than you, I take away your Freedom Because that is according to my principles.”
― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

“Often I must Speak otherwise than I Think. This is Called Diplomacy.”
― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

“To Suspect your Own Mortality is to Know the Beginning of Terror; To Learn Irrefutably that you are mortal is to Know the End of Terror.”
― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

“One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp too strongly is to be taken over by power, and thus to become its victim.”
― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune