Hendrik > Hendrik's Quotes

“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

“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

“Truth suffers from too much analysis.

-Ancient Fremen Saying”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: "He is nothing but a boy -- a little boy!”
― Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends & Influence People

“The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Limits of survival are set by climate, those long drifts of change which a generation may fail to notice. And it is the extremes of climate which set the pattern. Lonely, finite humans may observe climatic provinces, fluctuations of annual weather and, occasionally may observe such things as “This is a colder year than I’ve ever known.” Such things are sensible. But humans are seldom alerted to the shifting average through a great span of years. And it is precisely in this alerting that humans learn how to survive on any planet. They must learn climate.”
― 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

“May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again

“The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called "spannungsbogen" -- which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: "I feed on your energy.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.”
― Sam Harris, Free Will

“The rover crested a nearby dune with the trailer in tow. It slowed for a few moments, then continued toward the ship at top speed. It came to a stop twenty meters away.
There it remained for ten minutes while the astronaut inside suited up.
He stumbled excitedly out of the airlock, falling to the ground then scrambling to his feet. Beholding the MAV, he gestured to it with both arms, as if in disbelief.
He leaped into the air several times, arms held high with fists clenched. Then he knelt on one knee and fist-pumped repeatedly.
Running to the spacecraft, he hugged Landing Strut B. After a few moments, he broke off the embrace to perform another round of leaping celebrations.
Now fatigued, the astronaut stood with arms akimbo, looking up at the sleek lines of the engineering marvel before him.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“Only a fool takes offense at customs different from her own.”
― Robert Jordan, The Shadow Rising

“When Arecibo is not listening to anything else, it hears the voice of creation.”
― Ted Chiang, The Great Silence

“The trance-state of prophecy is like no other visionary experience. It is not a retreat from the raw exposure of the senses (as are many trance-states) but an immersion in a multitude of new movements. Things move. It is an ultimate pragmatism in the midst of Infinity, a demanding consciousness where you come at last into the unbroken awareness that the universe moves of itself, that it changes, that its rules change, that nothing remains permanent or absolute throughout all such movement, that mechanical explanation for anything can work within precise confinements and, once the walls are broken down, the old explanations shatter and dissolve, blown away by new movements. The things you see in this trance are sobering, often shattering. They demand your utmost effort to remain whole and, even so, you emerge from that state profoundly changed.”
― Frank Herbert

“The mind imposes this framework which it calls ‘reality’. That arbitrary framework has a tendency to be quite independent of what your senses report.”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

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

“My Uncle Malky always said the Lord Leto never responded to prayer. He said the Lord Leto looked on prayer as attempted coercion, a form of violence against the chosen god, telling the immortal what to do: Give me a miracle, God, or I won't believe in you!”
― 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

“Bitterness is repaid more often than kindness.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“Only fools prefer the past!”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“I once saw a spindly man carrying a stone larger than his head upon his back. He stumbled beneath the weight, shirtless under the sun, wearing only a loincloth. He tottered down a busy thoroughfare. People made way for him. Not because they sympathized with him, but because they feared the momentum of his steps. You dare not impede one such as this. The monarch is like this man, stumbling along, the weight of a kingdom on his shoulders. Many give way before him, but so few are willing to step in and help carry the stone. They do not wish to attach themselves to the work, lest they condemn themselves to a life full of extra burdens. I left my carriage that day and took up the stone, lifting it for the man. I believe my guards were embarrassed. One can ignore a poor shirtless wretch doing such labor, but none ignore a king sharing the load. Perhaps we should switch places more often. If a king is seen to assume the burden of the poorest of men, perhaps there will be those who will help him with his own load, so invisible, yet so daunting.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“We remember the good times and the bad ones, forgetting that most times are neither good nor bad. They just are.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“To lack feeling is to be dead, but to act on every feeling is to be a child.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“Too many scholars think of research as purely a cerebral pursuit. If we do nothing with the knowledge we gain, then we have wasted our study. Books can store information better than we can--what we do that books cannot is interpret. So if one is not going to draw conclusions, then one might as well just leave the information in the texts.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“Why was it that scientists were so excited to discover facts that farmers had known for generations and generations?”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“A story doesn’t live until it is imagined in someone’s mind.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.”
― Pablo Picasso