Les > Les's Quotes

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“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

“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

“Let me tell you something you haven't learnt yet, something you learn only by living awhile. As you get older, you find that life begins to wear you down. Doesn't matter who you are or what you do, it happens. Experience, time, events - they all conspire against you to steal away your energy, to erode your confidence, to make you question things you wouldn't have given a second thought to when you were young. It happens gradually, a chipping away that you don't even notice at first, and then one day it's there. You wake up and you just don't have the fire anymore...Then you have a choice. You can either give in to what you're feeling, just say "okay, enough is enough" and be done with it, or you can fight it. You can accept that every day you're alive you're going to have to face it down, that you're going to have to say to yourself that you don't care what you feel, that it doesn't matter what happens anyway, that you're going to do what you have to because otherwise you're defeated and life doesn't have any real pupose left. When you can do that, little Wren, when you can accept the wearing down and the eroding, then you can do anything. How did I manage to keep going out nights? I just told myself I didn't matter all that much - that those in here mattered more. You know something? It's not so hard really. You just have to get past the fear.”
― Terry Brooks (The Elf Queen of Shannara)

“What we have in life that we can count on is who we are and where we come from, she thought absently. For better or worse, that is what we have to sustain us in our endevors, to buttress us in our darker moments, and to remind us of our identity. Without those things, we are adrift.”
― Terry Brooks, A Knight of the Word

“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.”
― Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune

“Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die.”
― Herbert Hoover

“There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.”
― Frank Herbert

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

“Education is no substitute for intelligence.”
― Frank Herbert

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

“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

“Truth suffers from too much analysis.

-Ancient Fremen Saying”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class - whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.
- Politics as Repeat Phenomenon: Bene Gesserit Training Manual”
― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

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

“We can say that 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.”
― Frank Herbert

“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

“Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your 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.
Darwi Odrade - Chapterhouse: Dune”
― Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune

“The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.”
― Frank Herbert

“The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth.”
― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

“Nature does not make mistakes. Right and wrong are human categories.”
― Frank Herbert

“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

“Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual.

-Words of Muad'dib by Princess Irulan.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“Friends should be like books, few, but hand-selected. ”
― C. J. Langenhoven

“Don't listen to a man who says we have to work together as a team. He means we have to work as he says.”
― C.J. Langenhoven

“If you really want to hurt, find someone who loves you.”
― C.J. Langenhoven

“To test a man, determine how much it takes to make him lie.”
― C.J. Langenhoven

“It could be disastrous to speak your mind while you are deep in thought.”
― C.J. Langenhoven

“Absence is the enemy of love and the friend of friendship.”
― C.J. Langenhoven

“Never offer unsolicited advice. The receiver might not know that you are smarter than him.”
― C.J. Langenhoven