If enough of us believe, a new thing can be made to exist. Belief structure creates a filter through which chaos is sifted into order.
If you ask “Should we be in space?” you ask a nonsense question. We are in space. We will be in space.
If we define Futurism as an exploration beyond accepted limits, then the nature of limiting systems becomes the first object of exploration.
A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people.
When you imagine mistakes, there can be no self-defense.
Prophets have a way of dying by violence.
The dice cannot read their own spots.
The mind goes on working no matter how we try to hold it back.
The joy of living, its beauty, is all bound up in the fact that life can surprise you.
The hearts of all men dwell in the same wilderness.
Give me a lamp so I can find the day.
The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we do to each other.
Law always chooses sides on the basis of enforcement power. Morality and legal niceties have little to do with it when the real question is: Who has the clout?
A creature who has spent his life creating one particular representation of his selfdom will die rather than become the antithesis of that representation.
Whether a thought is spoken or not it is a real thing and it has power,” Tuek said. “You might find the line between life and death among the Fremen to be too sharp and quick.
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.
This is the awe-inspiring universe of magic: There are no atoms, only waves and motions all around. Here, you discard all belief in barriers to understanding. You put aside understanding itself. This universe cannot be seen, cannot be heard, cannot be detected in any way by fixed perceptions. It is the ultimate void where no preordained screens occur upon which forms may be projected. You have only one awareness here – the screen of the magi: Imagination! Here, you learn what it is to be human. You are a creator of order, of beautiful shapes and systems, an organizer of chaos.
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.
The test of a man isn’t what you think he’ll do. It’s what he actually does.
The thing the ecologically illiterate don’t realise about an ecosystem is that it’s a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche. A system has order, flowing from point to point. If something dams that flow, order collapses. The untrained might miss that collapse until it was too late. That’s why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.