Michael Hamilton > Michael's Quotes

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#1

“There is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe. It has symmetry, elegance, and grace - these qualities you find always in that the true artist captures. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, the way sand trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of the creosote bush of the pattern of its leaves. We try to copy these patterns in our lives and in our society, seeking the rhythms, the dances, the forms that comfort. Yet, it is possible to see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. It is clear that the ultimate pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all things move towards death.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

tags: death, fixity, pattern, perfection, society, universe

181 likes

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#2

“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

tags: bene-gesserit, fear, litany-against-fear, motivational, scifi

16752 likes

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#3

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

tags: dune

2533 likes

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#4

“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

tags: muad-dib, order, princess-irulan, reality, understanding

2130 likes

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#5

“What do you despise? By this are you truly known.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

tags: muad-dib, princess-irulan

1051 likes

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#6

“There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

tags: death, legacy, life, muad-dib, philosophy, truth, wisdom

895 likes

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#7

“When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong - faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

tags: politics, religion, science-fiction

823 likes

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#8

“It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

734 likes

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#9

“It is so shocking to find out how many people do not believe that they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

tags: thoughtful

758 likes

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#10

“Hope clouds observation.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

tags: dune

674 likes

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#11

“The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

685 likes

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#12

“The mind can go either direction under stress—toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

tags: stress

574 likes

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#13

“Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

tags: duke-leto-atreides

577 likes

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#14

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

627 likes

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#15

“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

tags: learning, science

519 likes

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#16

“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

tags: greatness, myth, pretension, sardonic

438 likes

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#17

“The people who can destroy a thing, they control it.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

401 likes

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#18

“Survival is the ability to swim in strange water.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

tags: bene-gesserit, proverb

385 likes

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#19

“Try looking into that place where you dare not look! You'll find me there, staring out at you!”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

tags: fear, self-knowledge

351 likes

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#20

“Fear is the mind-killer.”
― Frank Herbert , Dune

tags: 1965, fear, litany, panic, serenity

386 likes

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#21

“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

tags: arrakis, attitude, complete, dune, knife

325 likes

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#22

“Proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you have always known.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

tags: education, learning, teaching

227 likes

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#23

“There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man - with human flesh.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

237 likes

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#24

“Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

tags: research, science

244 likes

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#25

“Give as few orders as possible," his father had told him once long ago. "Once you've given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

tags: leadership

179 likes

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#26

“My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something cannot emerge from nothing,' he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable 'the truth' can be.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

tags: morality, truth

174 likes

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#27

“The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

170 likes

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#28

“Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It's shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad'Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

161 likes

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#29

“Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who so survive.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

tags: ecology, freedom, population, population-growth

139 likes

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#30

“How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

tags: anger, dissonance, repression

133 likes

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death
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