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Self-awareness: facing mirrors that pass through the universe, gathering new images on the way—endlessly reflexive. The infinite seen as finite, the analogue of consciousness carrying the sensed bits of infinity.
lives: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
“How tempting it is to raise high walls and keep out change. Rot here in our own self-satisfied comfort.”
“There are circumstances where viciousness can blunt viciousness,”
“You are a mirror upon which the universe is reflected. That reflection is all you experience. Images bounce from your senses. Hypotheses arise. Important even when wrong.
“Incomplete suppression of trade in any commodity always increases the profits of the tradesmen, especially the profits of the senior distributors.” His voice was warningly hesitant. “That is the fallacy of thinking you can control unwanted narcotics by stopping them at your borders.”
You cannot manipulate a marionette with only one string.
We are shaped by pressures whether we resist them or not. Pressures and shapings—that was life. And I create new pressures by my secret defiance.
Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your own life. The object can be stated this way: Live the best life you can. Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck.
effect: ecstasy amplified until it drove out all reason and bound its victims to the source of such rewards.
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.
“Rules are often an excuse to ignore compassion.”
Neither love nor hate were purely rational. He thought of such emotions as a dark fountain shadowing the air all around, a primitive gusher that sprayed unsuspecting humans.
Remember: Bureaucracy elevates conformity . . . make that elevates “fatal stupidity” to the status of religion.
Many things we do naturally become difficult only when we try to make them intellectual subjects. It is possible to know so much about a subject that you become totally ignorant.
“Trying to avoid complications often creates them.”
“We should grant power over our affairs only to those who are reluctant to hold it and then only under conditions that increase the reluctance.”
Politics: the art of appearing candid and completely open while concealing as much as possible.”
Face your fears or they will climb over your back.
“Sympathy for the enemy—a weakness of police and armies alike. Most perilous are the unconscious sympathies directing you to preserve your enemy intact because the enemy is your justification for existence.”
“Our gods should mature as we mature.”
“Thinking you know why you behave as you do gives you all sorts of excuses for extraordinary behavior.”
Humans are born with a susceptibility to that most persistent and debilitating disease of intellect: self-deception.
Give me the judgment of balanced minds in preference to laws every time. Codes and manuals create patterned behavior. All patterned behavior tends to go unquestioned, gathering destructive momentum.
Since every individual is accountable ultimately to the self, formation of that self demands the utmost care and attention?”
“Beware jargon. It usually hides ignorance and carries little knowledge.”
Fish Speaker democracy became Honored Matre autocracy. No more doubts. “The tyranny of the minority cloaked in the mask of the majority,” Odrade called it, her voice exultant. “Downfall of democracy. Either overthrown by its own excesses or eaten away by bureaucracy.”
If history had any repetitive patterns, here was one. A drumbeat of repetition. First, a Civil Service law masked in the lie that it was the only way to correct demagogic excesses and spoils systems. Then the accumulation of power in places voters could not touch. And finally, aristocracy.
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.
Never try to teach someone a lesson he cannot absorb.”
Making workable choices occurs in a crucible of informative mistakes. Thus Intelligence accepts fallibility. And when absolute (infallible) choices are not known, Intelligence takes chances with limited data in an arena where mistakes are not only possible but also necessary.
“These are typical questions, Suipol: Who gets the credit? Who will be blamed if it causes problems? Will it shift the power structure, costing us jobs? Or will it make some subsidiary department more important?”
“These are political questions,” Odrade said. “They demonstrate how motives of bureaucracy are directly opposed to the need for adapting to change. Adaptability is a prime requirement for life to survive.”
Answers are a perilous grip on the universe. They can appear sensible yet explain nothing.
“Revenge is for children and the emotionally retarded.”
Unused power was like a marionette with visible strings, nobody holding them. A compelling attraction: I could make it dance.
