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“Power bases are very dangerous because they attract people who are truly insane, people who seek power only for the sake of power.
But the truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it.
“Membership in a conspiracy, as in an army, frees people from the sense of personal responsibility.”
“They believe that by risking death they pay the price of any violent behavior against enemies of their own choosing. They have the invader mentality. Nunepi does not believe himself responsible for anything done against aliens.”
“But he cut himself loose from the restraints of the past and he objects to paying the price.”
Safaris through ancestral memories teach me many things. The patterns, ahhh, the patterns. Liberal bigots are the ones who trouble me most. I distrust the extremes. Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over any future. Scratch a liberal and find a closet aristocrat. It’s true! Liberal governments always develop into aristocracies. The bureaucracies betray the true intent of people who form such governments. Right from the first, the little people who formed the governments which promised to equalize the social burdens found themselves suddenly in the hands of
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Knowledge of mistakes taught him long-term corrections. He had to be constantly aware of consequences. If consequences were lost or concealed, lessons were lost.
“The undeserving maintain power by promoting hysteria,” Moneo said. “The Atreides art is the art of ruling without hysteria, the art of being responsible for the uses of power.”
Small souls who seek power over others first destroy the faith those others might have in themselves.”
“When you see a spectrum, do you desire one color there above all the others?”
Most civilization is based on cowardice. It’s so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame.
He has learned that it is difficult to live in the present, pointless to live in the future and impossible to live in the past.”
“Most believe that a satisfactory future requires a return to an idealized past, a past which never in fact existed.”
In all of my universe I have seen no law of nature, unchanging and inexorable. This universe presents only changing relationships which are sometimes seen as laws by short-lived awareness. These fleshly sensoria which we call self are ephemera withering in the blaze of infinity, fleetingly aware of temporary conditions which confine our activities and change as our activities change. If you must label the absolute, use its proper name: Temporary.
