The Book of the Way
A New English Version, 1988. Stephen Mitchell's brilliant interpretation of Laozi's ancient manual to Life, the Universe and Everything. Excerpts from the 2000 Perennial Classics edition. 113 pp. ISBN 0-06-095543-0.
When you are content to be simply yourself
and don't compare or compete,
everybody will respect you.ch. 8
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner.ch. 9
Giving birth and nourishing,
having without possessing,
acting with no expectations,
leading and not trying to control:
this is the supreme virtue.ch. 10
When the Master governs, the people
are hardly aware that he exists.
Next best is a leader who is loved.
Next, one who is feared.
The worst is one who is despised.If you don't trust the people,
you make them untrustworthy.ch. 17
He who tries to shine
dims his own light.
He who defines himself
can't know who he really is.
He who has power over others
can't empower himself.
He who clings to his work
will create nothing that endures.If you want to accord with the Tao,
just do your job, then let go.ch. 24
Do you want to improve the world?
I don't think it can be done.The world is sacred.
It can't be improved.
If you tamper with it, you'll ruin it.
If you treat it like an object, you'll lose it.ch. 29
For every force there is a counterforce.
Violence, even well intentioned,
always rebounds upon oneself.The Master does his job
and then stops.
He understands that the universe
is forever out of control,
and that trying to dominate events
goes against the current of the Tao.
Because he believes in himself,
he doesn't try to convince others.
Because he is content with himself,
he doesn't need others' approval.
Because he accepts himself,
the whole world accepts him.ch. 30
Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength;
mastering yourself is true power.ch. 33
Ritual is the husk of true faith,
the beginning of chaos.ch. 38
She is good to people who are good.
She is also good to people who aren't good.
This is true goodness.She trusts people who are trustworthy.
She also trusts people who aren't trustworthy.
This is true trust.ch. 49
The Master gives himself up
to whatever the moment brings.
He knows that he is going to die,
and he has nothing left to hold on to:
no illusions in his mind,
no resistances in his body.
He doesn't think about his actions;
they flow from the core of his being.
He holds nothing back from life;
therefore he is ready for death,
as a man is ready for sleep
after a good day's work.ch. 50
The more prohibitions you have,
the less virtuous people will be.
The more weapons you have,
the less secure people will be.
The more subsidies you have,
the less self-reliant people will be.ch. 57
For governing a country well
there is nothing better than moderation.The mark of a moderate man
is freedom from his own ideas.ch. 59
When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.
Having realized it, he admits it.
Having admitted it, he corrects it.
He considers those who point out his faults
as his most benevolent teachers.
He thinks of his enemy
as the shadow that he himself casts.ch. 61
All of them embody
the virtue of non-competition.
Not that they don't love to compete,
but they do it in the spirit of play.
In this they are like children
and in harmony with the Tao.ch. 68
When they lose their sense of awe,
people turn to religion.
When they no longer trust themselves,
they begin to depend upon authority.ch. 72
If you realize that all things change,
there is nothing you will try to hold on to.
If you aren't afraid of dying,
there is nothing you can't achieve.Trying to control the future
is like trying to take the master carpenter's place.
When you handle the master carpenter's tools,
chances are that you'll cut yourself.ch. 74
Say not, I have found the truth, but rather, I have found a truth.
Alleged quotes as well as excerpts that simply don't have a section of their own.
The wise man is always free; he is always held in honor; he is always master of the laws. The law is not made for the just, but for the unjust. The just man is a man unto himself, and he does not need to summon the law from afar, for he carries it enclosed in his heart…
Saint Ambrose
Letters, Letter to Simplicianus (386)
Mark you this, Bassanio,
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.William Shakespeare
The Merchant of Venice (1598)
Act I, Scene III
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.William Shakespeare
The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke (1602)
Act I, Scene IV
Benjamin Franklin, 1755
There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head, […]
Arthur Schopenhauer (*1788 †1860)
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
No miracle has ever taken place under conditions which science can accept. Experience shows, without exception, that miracles occur only in times and in countries in which miracles are believed in, and in the presence of persons who are disposed to believe in them.
Ernest Renan
Vie de Jésus (1863)
[A] thought comes when "it" wishes, and not when "I" wish;
Friedrich Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
ch. I: Prejudices of Philosophers
Thought is subversive, and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless to the welltried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid… Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
Bertrand Russell (*1872 †1970)
Art has no function. It is not necessary. It has nothing to do with what anyone wants you to do or wants it to be, nothing but you and itself. The work generates itself and ideas and progress and learning come out of doing the work in a particular way. Creative art is a learning process for the artist and not a description of what is already known. An audience is always warming but it must never be necessary to your work. The work needs concentration and one is often exhausted by it. It takes so much effort just to begin and although going on is mostly a pleasure it is also a great effort. The only thing for a creative artist to do is to do his chosen work. But really there is no choice. Nobody chooses. The only thing left for a creative artist to do is to do his chosen work in spite of everything and regardless of anything because when living draws to its end there are no excuses he can make to himself or to anyone else for not having done it. Either he did do it or he did not do it and very often he did not. Alas very often he did not.
Gertrude Stein (*1874 †1946)
Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.
Arthur Stanley Eddington (*1882 †1944)
Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to the truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.
Khalil Gibran (*1883 †1931)
The Vision (1994)
On Progress: Children of Gods, Scions of Apes
That is precisely what common sense is for, to be jarred into uncommon sense. One of the chief services which mathematics has rendered the human race in the past century is to put "common sense" where it belongs, on the topmost shelf next to the dusty canister labelled "discarded nonsense."
Eric Temple Bell (*1883 †1960)
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower (*1890 †1969)
If one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of creation, it would appear that God has an inordinate fondness for stars and beetles.
J. B. S. Haldane (*1892 †1964)
If you want to build a ship
don't herd people together to collect wood
and don't assign them tasks and work,
but rather teach them to long for the
endless immensity of the sea.Antoine-Marie-Roger de Saint-Exupéry (*1900 †1944)
Does it not appear as if one who lived habitually on one side of the pain threshold might need a different sort of religion from one who habitually lives on the other?
William James
The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
A Study in Human Nature
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Aleister Crowley
The Book of the Law (1904)
ch. I
We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert.
J. Robert Oppenheimer (*1904 †1967)
Yes, he said in a voice indescribable, you are right. I am afraid of him. Therefore I swear by God that I will seek out this man whom I fear until I find him, and strike him on the mouth. If heaven were his throne and the earth his footstool, I swear that I would pull him down.
How? asked the staring Professor. Why?
Because I am afraid of him, said Syme; and no man should leave in the universe anything of which he is afraid…
G. K. Chesterton
The Man Who Was Thursday (1907)
ch. VIII: The Professor Explains
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.
William Strunk, Jr.
The Elements of Style (1918)
ch. II: ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION
17. Omit needles words.
Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible only to himself. This principle is the philosophical foundation of anarchism, and, for anything that science has yet proved, may be the philosophical foundation of the universe; but it is fatal to all society and is especially fatal to the State.
Henry and Brooks Adams
The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma (1920)
All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.
T. E. Lawrence "of Arabia"
Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922)
Say not, I have found the truth, but rather, I have found a truth.
Say not, I have found the path of the soul. Say rather, I have met the soul walking upon my path.
Khalil Gibran
The Prophet (1923)
ch. 17: Self-Knowledge
Ahimsa, infinite love, is a weapon of matchless potency… It is an attribute of the brave, in fact it is their all. It does not come within the reach of the coward. It is no wooden or lifeless dogma but a living and lifegiving force.
Mohandas K. Gandhi, 1924
- You can't win.
- You can't break even.
- You can't even quit the game.
Ginsberg's Theorem (*1926 †1997)
- Things will get worse before they get better.
- Who said things would get better?
Ehrman's Corollary to Ginsberg's Theorem
"Of course we must keep young; but it is useless to keep young if we do not also grow up, and never stop growing up. To keep young, surely, is just to keep supple and keen; and to grow up is not at all a mere sinking into stiffness and into disillusion, but a rising into ever finer skill in all the actions of the game of living. There is something else, too, which is part of growing up—to see that life is really, after all, a game; a terribly serious game, no doubt, but none the less a game. When we play a game, as it should be played, we strain every muscle to win; but all the while we care less for winning than for the game. And we play the better for it. When barbarians play against a Patagonian team, they forget that it is a game, and go mad for victory. […] How they pester and curse the umpire, too! I have done that myself, of course, before now; not in games but in life. I have actually cursed the umpire of life. Better so, anyhow, than to insult him with presents, in the hope of being favoured; which is what you are doing here, with your salaams and your vows. I never did that. I merely hated him. Then later I learned to laugh at him, or rather at the thing you set up in his place. But now at last I see him clearly, and laugh with him, at myself, for having missed the spirit of the game."
Olaf Stapledon
Last and First Men (1930)
A Story of the Near and Far Future
ch. V: THE FALL OF THE FIRST MEN, 3. The Cult of Youth
It occurred to him that it was almost frighteningly easy to lie convincingly to someone you loved.
Fritz Leiber
Conjure Wife (1943)
ch. VIII
For the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.
[…] similarly, we expect our friends to follow this or that logical and conventional pattern we have fixed for them. Thus X will never compose the immortal music that would clash with the second-rate symphonies he has accustomed us to. Y will never commit murder. Under no circumstances can Z ever betray us. We have it all arranged in our minds, and the less often we see a particular person the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he conforms to our notion of him every time we hear of him. Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical. We would prefer not to have known at all our neighbor, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has seen.
Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita (1955)
ch. 27
[…] It's a commonplace that only sane men suspect their own sanity, isn't it?
It's a common misconception. Most pyschopathic obsessions begin with a mild worry—one that can't be shaken.
James Blish
They Shall Have Stars (1956)
BOOK TWO, Ch. Six: Jupiter V
Ninety percent of SF is crud, but then, ninety percent of everything is crud.
Sturgeon's Law, 1951
I tell this story to illustrate the truth of the statement I heard long ago in the Army: Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. There is a very great distinction because when you are planning for an emergency you must start with this one thing: the very definition of 'emergency' is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning.
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1957-11-14)
And these poor creatures were obsessed by the idea that everything that existed had to have a purpose, and that some purposes were higher than others.
These creatures spent most of their time trying to find out what their purpose was. And every time they found out what seemed to be a purpose of themselves, the purpose seemed so low that the creatures were filled with disgust and shame.
And, rather than serve such a low purpose, the creatures would make a machine to serve it. This left the creatures free to serve higher purposes. But whenever they found a higher purpose, the purpose still wasn't high enough.
So machines were made to serve higher purposes, too.
And the machines did everything so expertly that they were finally given the job of finding out what the highest purpose of the creatures could be.
The machines reported in all honesty that the creatures couldn't really be said to have any purpose at all.
The creatures thereupon began slaying each other, because they hated purposeless things above all else.
Kurt Vonnegut
The Sirens of Titan (1959)
ch. Twelve: The Gentleman from Tralfamadore
We did not have the time to learn everything that we wanted to know.
All of this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.
John F. Kennedy
Inaugural Address (1961-01-20)
Where nature makes natural allies of us all, we can demonstrate that beneficial relationships are possible even with those with whom we must deeply disagree, and this must someday be the basis of world peace and world law.
John F. Kennedy
State of the Union Address (1961-01-29)
Peace and freedom do not come cheap, and we are destined—all of us here today—to live out most if not all of our lives in uncertainty and challenge and peril.
John F. Kennedy
Address at the University of North Carolina (1961-10-12)
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy, 1962
There are no longer "dancers," the possessed. The cleavage of men into actor and spectators is the central fact of our time. We are obsessed with heroes who live for us and whom we punish. If all the radios and televisions were deprived of their sources of power, all books and paintings burned tomorrow, all shows and cinemas closed, all the arts of vicarious existence…
We are content with the "given" in sensation's quest. We have been metamorphised from a mad body dancing on hillsides to a pair of eyes staring in the dark.
[…] to be a good story is to me the highest test of the truth of anything. I make no distinction whatever between reality and fantasy, or the objective and the subjective. All life and all awareness are ultimately one, including intensest pain and death itself. Not all the play need please us, and ends are never comforting. Some things fit together harmoniously and beautifully and startingly with thrilling discords—those are true—and some do not, and those are merely bad art. […]
Fritz Leiber
Our Lady Of Darkness (1978)
ch. XVII
Do not fall into the error of the artist who boasts of twenty years experience in his craft while in fact he has had only one year of experience—twenty times.
They say some people never learn, but Never is a long time; longer than Forever, which is simply Now.
David Carradine
Spirit of Shaolin (1991)
There are people who love birds so much they free them. There are others who love them so much they cage them.
Gene Wolfe
The Book of the Long Sun: Caldé of the Long Sun (1994)
ch. Four: The Plan of Pas
… I'll pass the test, that's all. Didn't you ever know anyone who could pass tests but flunked real life?
90% competency is the place where professionalism appears. A 90% competent writer can produce fiction worth reading—no glaring errors in form, characterization, or dialog. Somebody, somewhere, will probably publish it. You can reach 90% with a couple of years hard work in most artistic fields, if you have any native talent at all. You will then spend the rest of your life mastering the remaining 10%.
Daniel Keys Moran
A 3D Manifesto (1998)
Moran's Rule of 90
When I argue with reality, I lose—but only 100 per cent of the time.
Byron Katie
Loving What Is (2002)
[…] but the problem in my opinion is that then you're actually kind of controlling the news rather than just covering it.
Linda Blackford
Whiteout Mea Culpa: Kentucky Paper Apologizes for Lack of Civil Rights Coverage 40 Years Ago (2004)
If my kids get anything from me, growing up, I hope they get this—you can depend on people to do what is in their nature. So you'd damn well better associate yourself with decent people who will do the right thing because it's who they are … because nothing else can be relied upon.
Daniel Keys Moran
Protect the Innocent — Star Wars — Lawrence — Lonesome Dove — Knightriders (2007-06-03)
People with real power never fear of losing it. People with control think of little else.
Joss Whedon
Mom, He's Doing It Again... (2007-11-10)
We should test our own ideas rigorously, so that by falsifying them ourselves we spare ourselves the embarrassment of having them refuted by others, and may thereby drive ourselves on to new and perhaps less vulnerable ideas.
- No action is without side-effects.
- Nothing ever goes away.
- There is no free lunch.
Commoner's Three Laws of Ecology
Confusion (entropy) is always increasing in society. Only if someone or something works extremely hard can this confusion be reduced to order in a limited region. Nevertheless, this effort will still result in an increase in the total confusion of society at large.
Everitt's Form of the Second Law of Thermodynamics
- Great minds discuss ideas.
- Average minds discuss events.
- Small minds discuss people.
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Remember you don't really own anything you can't carry at a dead run.
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May your gods walks before you in all the dark places you go.
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We have not succeeded in answering all of your problems. The answers we have found only serve to raise a whole set of new questions. In some ways, we feel we are as confused as ever, but we believe we are confused on a higher level and about more important things.
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Anyone who has no fear of death himself can succeed in inflicting it
The book Niccolò Machiavelli is remembered for. Translation by George Bull, excerpts from the 2003 Penguin Classics edition. 106 pp. ISBN 0-140-44915-9.
It should be borne in mind that there is nothing more difficult to handle, more doubtful of success, and more dangerous to carry through than initiating changes in a state's constitution. The innovator makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old order, and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would prosper under the new. Their support is lukewarm partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the existing laws on their side, and partly because men are generally incredulous, never really trusting new things unless they have tested them by experience. In consequence, whenever those who oppose the changes can do so, they attack vigorously, and the defence made by the others is only lukewarm.
p. 21
So it should be noted that when he seizes a state the new ruler must determine all the injuries that he will need to inflict. He must inflict them once for all, and not have to renew them every day, and in that way he will be able to set men's minds at rest and win them over to him when he confers benefits. Whoever acts otherwise, either through timidity or misjudgement, is always forced to have the knife ready in his hand and he can never depend on his subjects because they, suffering fresh and continuous violence, can never feel secure with regard to him. Violence must be inflicted once for all; people will then forget what it tastes like and so be less resentful. Benefits must be conferred gradually; and in that way they will taste better. Above all, a prince must live with his subjects in such a way that no development, either favourable or adverse, makes him vary his conduct. For, when adversity brings the need for it, there is no time to inflict harm; and the favours he may confer are profitless, because they are seen as being forced, and so they earn no thanks.
p. 32
The people are more honest in their intentions than the nobles are, because the latter want to oppress the people, whereas they want only not to be oppressed. Moreover, a prince can never make himself safe against a hostile people: there are too many of them.
p. 33
The first way to lose your state is to neglect the art of war; the first way to win a state is to be skilled in the art of war.
p. 47
None the less, a prince must be slow to believe allegations and to take action, and must watch that he does not come to be afraid of his own shadow; his behaviour must be tempered by humanity and prudence so that over-confidence does not make him rash or excessive distrust make him unbearable.
p. 54
He should appear to be compassionate, faithful to his word, kind, guileless, and devout. And indeed he should be so. But his disposition should be such that, if he needs to be the opposite, he knows how.
p. 57
[W]hen a prince has the goodwill of the people he must not worry about conspiracies; but when the people are hostile and regard him with hatred he must go in fear of everything and everyone.
p. 60f
[I]t should be noted that princes cannot escape death if the attempt is made by a fanatic, because anyone who has no fear of death himself can succeed in inflicting it;
p. 65
[T]he best fortress that exists is to avoid being hated by the people.
p. 70
[N]o government should ever imagine that it can always adopt a safe course; rather, it should regard all possible courses of action as risky. This is the way things are: whenever one tries to escape one danger one runs into another. Prudence consists in being able to assess the nature of a particular threat and in accepting the lesser evil.
p. 73f
The first opinion that is formed of a ruler's intelligence is based on the quality of the men he has around him. When they are competent and loyal he can always be considered wise, because he has been able to recognize their competence and to keep them loyal.
p. 74
There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the second appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor through others. This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third useless.
p. 74
[T]he only way to safeguard yourself against flatterers is by letting people understand that you are not offended by the truth;
p. 75f
And his attitude towards his councils and towards each one of his advisers should be such that they will recognize that the more freely they speak out the more acceptable they will be.
p. 76
A prince must, therefore, never lack advice. […] All the same, he should be a constant questioner, and he must listen patiently to the truth regarding what he has inquired about. Moreover, if he finds that anyone for some reason holds the truth back he must show his wrath.
p. 76
The mind is its own place
Two famous poems by John Milton.
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n
Poem by John Milton.
Farewell happy Fields
Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.Book I
Here at least
We shall be free; th'Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n.Book I
Gabriel, thou hadst in Heav'n th'esteem of wise,
And such I held thee; but this question askt
Puts me in doubt. Lives there who loves his pain?
Who would not, finding way, break loose from Hell,
Though thither doom'd?Book IV
So may'st thou live, till like ripe Fruit thou drop
Into thy Mother's lap, or be with ease
Gather'd, not harshly pluckt, for death mature:
This is old age; but then thou must outlive
Thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty, which will change
To wither'd weak and gray: they Senses then
Obtuse, of taste and pleasure must forgo,
To what thou hast, and for the Air of youth
Hopeful and cheerful, in thy blood will reign
A melancholy damp of cold and dry
To weigh thy spirits down, and last consume
The Balm of Life.Book XI
Nor love thy Life, nor hate; but what thou liv'st
Live well, how long or short permit to Heav'nBook XI
O Visions ill forseen! better had I
Liv'd ignorant of future, so had borne
My part of evil only, each day's lot
Enough to bear; those now, that were dispenst
The burd'n of many Ages, on me 'light
At once, by my foreknowledge gaining Birth
Abortive, to torment me ere their being,
With thought that they must be. Let no man seek
Henceforth to be foretold what shall befall
Him or his ChildrenBook XI
The first and wisest of them all profess'd
To know this only, that he nothing knew
Poem by John Milton.
Yet he who reigns within himself, and rules
Passions, Desires, and Fears, is more a King;
Which every wise and virtuous man attains:
And who attains not, ill aspires to rule
Cities of men, or headstrong Multitudes,
Subject himself to Anarchy within,
Or lawless passions in him which he serves.Book II
Thou neither dost persuade me to seek wealth
For Empire's sake, nor Empire to affect
For glory's sake by all thy argument.
For what is glory but the blaze of fame,
The people's praise, if always praise unmixt?
And what the people but a herd confus'd,
A miscellaneous rabble, who extol
Things vulgar, and well-weigh'd, scare worth the praise
They praise and they admire they know not what;
And know not whom, but as one leads the other;
And what delight to be by such extoll'd,
To live upon their tongues and be their talk,
Of whom to be disprais'd were no small praise?Book III
Let that come when it comes; all hope is lost
Of my reception into grace; what worse?
For where no hope is left, is left no fear;
If there be worse, the expectation more
Of worse torments me than the feeling can.
I would be at the worst; worst is my Port,
My harbour and my ultimate repose,
The end I would attain, my final good.Book III
But these are false, or little else but dreams,
Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing firm.
The first and wisest of them all profess'd
To know this only, that he nothing knew.
Book IV
[…] who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgement equal or superior,
(And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek)
Uncertain and unsettl'd still remains,
Deep verst in books and shallow in himself,
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys
And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge;
As Children gathering pebbles on the shore.Book IV
They know enough who know how to learn
The Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography of Henry Brooks Adams.
Friends are born, not made, and Henry never mistook a friend except when in power.
ch. VII: TREASON (1860-1861)
Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.
ch. XIII: THE PRESS (1868)
A teacher is expected to teach truth, and may perhaps flatter himself that he does so, if he stops with the alphabet or the multiplication table, as a mother teaches truth by making her child eat with a spoon; but morals are quite another truth and philosophy is more complex still. A teacher must either treat history as a catalogue, a record, a romance, or as an evolution; and whether he affirms or denies evolution, he falls into all the burning faggots of the pit. He makes of his scholars either priests or atheists, plutocrats or socialists, judges or anarchists, almost in spite of himself. In essence incoherent and immoral, history had either to be taught as such—or falsified.
ch. XX: FAILURE (1871)
A new friend is always a miracle, but at thirty-three years old, such a bird of paradise rising in the sage-brush was an avatar. One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.
ch. XX: FAILURE (1871)
What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn.
ch. XXI: TWENTY YEARS AFTER (1892)
If you must label the absolute, use its proper name: Temporary
The magnum opus of the ingenious Frank Herbert.
Systematic is a deadly word
Essay about some of The Dune Chronicles' central themes. Highly recommended.
[…] no matter how admirable those people may appear to be. Beneath the hero's facade you will find a human being who makes human mistakes. Enormous problems arise when human mistakes are made on the grand scale available to a superhero.
It is the systems themselves that I see as dangerous. Systematic is a deadly word. Systems originate with human creators, with people who employ them. Systems take over and grind on and on.
I now believe that evolution, or deevolution, never ends short of death, that no society has ever achieved an absolute pinnacle, that all humans are not created equal. In fact, I believe attempts to create some abstract equalization create a morass of injustices that rebound on the equalizers. Equal justice and equal opportunity are ideals we should seek, but we should recognize that humans administer the ideals and that humans do not have equal ability.
What part do the meek play in creating the powerful? If a leader cannot admit mistakes, these mistakes will be hidden. Who says our leaders must be perfect? Where do they learn this?
Do you want an absolute prediction? Then you want only today, and you reject tomorrow. You are the ultimate conservative. You are trying to hold back movement in an infinitely changing universe. The verb to be does make idiots of us all.
Caution is indeed indicated, but not the terror that prevents all movement. Hang loose. And when someone asks whether you're starting a new cult, do what I do: Run like hell.
But the real universe is always one step beyond logic
World-famous Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novel. First of The Dune Chronicles. Excerpts from the 1982 Hodder & Stoughton paperback edition. 605 pp. ISBN 0-450-01184-4.
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.
from 'The Humanity of Muad'Dib'
by the Princess Irulan
Book I: DUNE, p. 83
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 Muad'Dib'
by the Princess Irulan
Book I: DUNE, p. 202
Deep in the human unconsciousness is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.
from 'The Sayings of Muad'Dib'
by the Princess Irulan
Book III: THE PROPHET, p. 430
'Much that was called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility towards life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eyes of God, that knowledge without action is empty. All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The 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've always known.'
Appendix II: The Religion of Dune, p. 577
'[…] We are daily confronted by the terrifying instability of all things human, yet we permit our religions to grow more rigid and controlled, more conforming and oppressive. What is this shadow across the highway of Divine Command? It is a warning that institutions endure, that symbols endure when their meaning is lost, that there is no summa of all attainable knowledge.'
Appendix II: The Religion of Dune, p. 578
To endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe
Second of The Dune Chronicles. Excerpts from the 1987 Ace Books paperback edition. 331 pp. ISBN 0-441-17269-5.
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
p. 67
No matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no matter the developments of life and society nor the complexity of the machine/human interface, there always come interludes of lonely power when the course of humankind, the very future of humankind, depends upon the relatively simple actions of single individuals.
from the Tleilaxu Godbuk
p. 209
I have heard the Bene Gesserit say, Bijaz said, that there is nothing firm, nothing balanced, nothing durable in all the universe—that nothing remains in its state, that each day, sometimes each hour, brings change.
p. 271
To endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe. You cannot hire a wise man or any other intellect to solve it for you. There's no writ of inquest or calling of witness to provide answers. No servant or disciple can dress the wound. You dress it yourself or continue bleeding for all to see.
p. ?
A fixed solution is, by definition, a dead solution
Third of The Dune Chronicles. Excerpts from the 1987 Ace Books paperback edition. 408 pp. ISBN 0-441-10402-9.
Good government never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. […]
Law and Governance
The Spacing Guild Manual
p. 148
This is the fallacy of power: ultimately it is effective only in an absolute, a limited universe. But the basic lesson of our relativistic universe is that things change. Any power must always meet a greater power. […]
The Preacher at Arrakeen
p. 154
The one-eyed view of our universe says you must not look far afield for problems. Such problems may never arrive. Instead, tend to the wolf within your fences. The packs ranging outside may not even exist.
The Azhar Book; Shamra I:4
p. 228
We can still remember the golden days before Heisenberg, who showed humans the walls enclosing our predestined arguments. The lives within me find this amusing. Knowledge, you see, has no uses without purpose, but purpose is what builds enclosing walls.
Leto Atreides II
His Voice
p. 241
Humankind periodically goes through a speedup of its affairs, thereby experiencing the race between the renewable vitality of the living and the beckoning vitiation of decadence. In this periodic race, any pause becomes luxury. Only then can one reflect that all is permitted; all is possible.
The Apocrypha of Muad'Dib
p. 276
Peace demands solutions, but we never reach living solutions; we only work toward them. A fixed solution is, by definition, a dead solution. The trouble with peace is that it tends to punish mistakes instead of rewarding brilliance.
The Words of My Father:
an account of Muad'Dib
reconstructed by Harq Al-ada
p. 295
[…] We'll go through the crucible once more, Stil. And we'll come out of it. We always arise from our own ashes. Always.
p. 399
The best prophets lead you up to the curtain and let you peer through for yourself
Forth and my favorite part of The Dune Chronicles. Excerpts from the 1987 Ace Books paperback edition. 423 pp. ISBN 0-441-29467-7.
It has occurred to me more than once that holy boredom is good and sufficient reason for the invention of free will.
Inscription on the storehouse at Dar-es Balat
p. 43
I know that few of you who read my words have ever thought about your ancestors this way. It has not occurred to you that your ancestors were survivors and that survival itself sometimes involved savage decisions, a kind of wanton brutality which civilized humankind works very hard to suppress. What price will you pay for that suppression? Will you accept your own extinction?
The Stolen Journals
p. 96
Remember that there exists a certain malevolence about the formation of any social order. It is the struggle for existence by an artificial entity. Despotism and slavery hover at the edges. Many injuries occur and, thus, the need for laws. The law develops its own power structure, creating more wounds and new injustices. Such trauma can be healed by cooperation, not by confrontation. The summons to cooperate identifies the healer.
The Stolen Journals
p. 228
[…] The difference between a good administrator and a bad one is about five heartbeats. Good administrators make immediate choices.
Acceptable choices?
They usually can be made to work. A bad administrator, on the other hand, hesitates, diddles around, asks for committees, for research and reports. Eventually, he acts in ways which create serious problems.
But don't they sometimes need more information to make…
A bad administrator is more concerned with reports than with decisions. He wants the hard record which he can display as an excuse for his errors.
And good administrators?
Oh, they depend on verbal orders. They never lie about what they've done if their verbal orders cause problems, and they surround themselves with people able to act wisely on the basis of verbal orders. Often, the most important piece of information is that something has gone wrong. Bad administrators hide their mistakes until it's too late to make corrections.
p. 240f
The best prophets lead you up to the curtain and let you peer through for yourself.
The Stolen Journals
p. 276
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.
The Stolen Journals
p. 366
If you must label the absolute, use its proper name: Temporary.
The Stolen Journals
p. 408
And the children of Dune's children awaken from empire as from a dream…
Fifth of The Dune Chronicles. Excerpts from the 1987 Ace Books paperback edition. 471 pp. ISBN 0-441-32800-8.
What we must strive for always! is to find the natural flow and go with it.
The Reverend Mother Taraza,
Conversational Record,
BG File GSXXMAT9
p. 90
Life cannot find reasons to sustain it, cannot be a source of decent mutual regard, unless each of us resolves to breathe such qualities into it.
Chenoeh: Conversations with Leto II
p. 132
Survival of self, of species, and of environment, these are what drive humans. You can observe how the order of importance changes in a lifetime. What are the things of immediate concern at a given age? Weather? The state of the digestion? Does he (or she) really care? All of those various hungers that flesh can sense and hope to satisfy. What else could possibly matter?
Leto II to Hwi Noree, His Voice: Dar-es Balat
p. 346
Memory never recaptures reality. Memory reconstructs. All reconstructions change the original, becoming external frames of reference that inevitably fall short.
Mentat Handbook
p. 396
When strangers meet, great allowances should be made for differences of custom and training.
The Lady Jessica, from Wisdom of Arrakis
p. 416
There's no secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves
Last of The Dune Chronicles. Excerpts from the 1987 Ace Books paperback edition. 433 pp. ISBN 0-441-10267-0.
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
p. 48
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.
Missionaria Protectiva,
Text QIV (decto)
p. 59
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.
Mentat Text Two (dicto)
p. 103
Humans are born with a susceptibility to that most persistent and debilitating disease of intellect: self-deception. The best of all possible worlds and the worst get their dramatic coloration from it. As nearly as we can determine, there is no natural immunity. Constant alertness is required.
The Coda
p. 224
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.
Darwi Odrade
p. 237
There's no secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves.
Darwi Odrade
p. 429
Doubt is the chastity of the mind
Hugo Award-winning novel by Roger Zelazny. Excerpts from the 2004 Eos trade paperback edition. 296 pp. ISBN 0-06-056723-6.
I'm very gullible when it comes to my own words. I believe everything I say, though I know I'm a liar.
ch. 1, p. 38
It is difficult to stir rebellion among those to whom all things are good. There is no room for evil in their minds, despite the fact that they suffer it constantly. The slave upon the rack who knows that he will be born again—perhaps as a fat merchant—if he suffers willingly—his outlook is not the same as that of a man with but one life to live. He can bear anything, knowing that great as his present pain may be, his future pleasure will rise higher.
ch. 1, p. 38
What man who has lived for more than a score of years desires justice, warrior? For my part, I find mercy infinitely more attractive. Give me a forgiving deity any day.
ch. 3, p. 108
You are trying to tell me that he was more than an executioner whom you talked out of doing his job?
Many people are executioners who have been talked out of doing their jobs, replied the one on the rock.
ch. 3, p. 117
[T]he personal strengths and weakness of a leader are no true indication of the merits of his cause.
ch. 3, p. 120
Dou you recall how, when we strove upon the balcony, you mocked me? You told me that I, too, took pleasure in the ways of the pain which you work. You were correct, for all men have within them both that which is dark and that which is light. A man is a thing of many divisions, not a pure, clear flame such as you once were. His intellect often wars with his emotions, his will with his desires… his ideals are at odds with his environment, and if he follows them, he knows keenly the loss of that which was old—but if he does not follow them, he feels the pain of having forsaken a new and noble dream. Whatever he does represents both a gain and a loss, an arrival and a departure. Always he mourns that which is gone and fears some part of that which is new. Reason opposes tradition. Emotions oppose the restrictions his fellow men lay upon him. Always, from the friction of these things, there arises the thing you called the curse of man and mocked—guilt!
ch. 4, p. 145
Sam shuddered as they sang on and on, recounting their vanished glories, confident of their ability to outlast any circumstance, to meet any force with the cosmic judo of a push and a tug and a long wait, watching anything of which they disapproved turn its strength upon itself and pass. Almost, in that moment, he believed that what they sang was truth, and that one day there would be none but the Rakasha, flitting above the pocked landscape of a dead world.
The he turned his mind to other matters and forced the mood from him. But in the days that followed, and even, on occasion, years afterward, it returned to plague his efforts and mock his joys, to make him wonder, know guilt, feel sadness and so be humbled.
ch. 4, p. 152f
Being a god is the quality of being able to be yourself to such an extend that your passions correspond with the forces of the universe, so that those who look upon you know this without hearing your name spoken. Some ancient poet said that the world is full of echoes and correspondences. Another wrote a long poem of an inferno, wherein each man suffered a torture which coincided in nature with those forces which had ruled his life. Being a god is being able to recognize within one's self these things that are important, and then to strike the single note that brings them into alignment with everything else that exists. Then, beyond morals or logic or esthetics, one is wind or fire, the sea, the mountains, rain, the sun or the stars, the flight of an arrow, the end of a day, the clasp of love. One rules through one's ruling passions.
ch. 4, p. 166f
[F]or there is that within them all which desires that somewhere there be an end to order and a beginning of chaos.
ch. 5, p. 172
It would be nice if there were some one thing constant and unchanging in the universe. If there is such a thing, then it is a thing which would have to be stronger than love, and it is a thing which I do not know.
ch. 5, p. 179
Doubt, Lady, is the chastity of the mind, […]
ch. 5, p. 181
What's the function of a galaxy?
Taoist novel by Ursula K. Le Guin. Excerpts from the 2001 Gollancz mass market paperback edition. 184 pp. ISBN-10: 1-85798-951-1.
[…] Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy? […]
ch. 6, p. 81
Are there really people without resentment, without hate, she wondered. People who never go cross-grained to the universe? Who recognize evil, and resist evil, and yet are utterly unaffected by it?
Of course there are. Countless, the living and the dead. Those who have returned in pure compassion to the wheel, those who follow the way that cannot be followed without knowing they follow it, the sharecropper's wife in Alabama and the lama in Tibet and the entomoligist in Peru and the millworker in Odessa and the greengrocer in London and the goatherd in Nigeria and the old, old man sharpening a stick by a dry streambed somewhere in Australia, and all the others. There is not one of us who has not known them. There are enough of them, enough to keep us going. Perhaps.
ch. 7, p. 99
A person who believes, as she did, that things fit: that there is a whole of which one is a part, and that in being a part one is whole: such a person has no desire whatever, at any time, to play God. Only those who have denied their being yearn to play at it.
ch. 7, p. 107
How do you tell the saviors from the degenerates?
Two philosophical novels by Robert M. Pirsig.
An inquiry into values
Novel by Robert M. Pirsig. Excerpts from the 2006 HarperTorch paperback edition. 540 pp. ISBN-13: 978-0-06-058946-2.
But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patters of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.
Part II, ch. 8, p. 122
In Part One of formal scientific method, which is the statement of the problem, the main skill is in stating absolutely no more than you are positive you know. It is much better to enter a statement "Solve Problem: Why doesn't cycle work?" which sounds dumb but is correct, than it is to enter a statement "Solve Problem: What is wrong with the electrical system?" when you don't absolutely know the trouble is in the electrical system. What you should state is "Solve Problem: What is wrong with cycle?" and then state as the first entry of Part Two: "Hypothesis Number One: The trouble is in the electrical system." You think of as many hypothesis as you can, then you design experiments test them to see which are true and which are false.
Part II, ch. 9, p. 131
From what fragments of memory I have, Phaedrus had a high regard for DeWeese because he didn't understand him. For Phaedrus, failure to understand something created tremendous interest and DeWeese's attitudes were fascinating. They seemed all haywire. Phaedrus would say something he thought was pretty funny and DeWeese would look at him in a puzzled way or else take him seriously. Other times Phaedrus would say something that was very serious and of deep concern, and DeWeese would break up laughing, as though he had cracked the cleverest joke he had ever heard.
Part II, ch. 12, p. 172
You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.
Part II, ch. 13, p. 189f
It seemed as though every rule he honestly tried to discover with them and learn with them was so full of exceptions and contradictions and qualifications and confusions that he wished he'd never come across the rule in the first place.
A student would always ask how the rule would apply in a certain special circumstance. Phaedrus would then have the choice of trying to fake through a made-up explanation of how it worked, or follow the selfless route and say what he really thought. And what he really thought was that the rule was pasted on to the writing after the writing was all done. It was post hoc, after the fact, instead of prior to the fact. And he became convinced that all the writers the students were supposed to mimic wrote without rules, putting down whatever sounded right, then going back to see if it still sounded right and changing it if it didn't.
Part II, ch. 15, p. 221
Little children were trained not to do "just what they liked" but … but what? … Of course! What others liked. And which others? Parents, teachers, supervisors, policemen, judges, officials, kings, dictators. All authorities. When you are trained to despise "just what you like" then, of course, you become a much more obedient servant of others—a good slave. When you learn not to do "just what you like" then the System loves you.
But suppose you do just what you like? Does that mean you're going to go out and shoot heroin, rob banks and rape old ladies? The person who is counseling you not to do "just as you like" is making some remarkable presumptions as to what is likable. He seems unaware that people may not rob banks because they have considered the consequences and decided they don't like to. He doesn't see that banks exist in the first place because they're "just what people like," namely, providers of loans. Phaedrus began to wonder how all this condemnation of "what you like" ever seemed such a natural objection in the first place.
Part III, ch. 19, p. 296
Harry Truman, of all people, comes to mind, when he said, concerning his administration's programs, "We'll just try them … and if they don't work … why then we'll just try something else." That may not be an exact quote, but it's close.
The reality of the American government isn't static, he said, it's dynamic. If we don't like it we'll get something better. The American government isn't going to get stuck on any set of fancy doctrinaire ideas.
The key word is "better"—Quality. Some may argue that the underlying form of the American government is stuck, is incapable of change in response to Quality, but that argument is not to the point. The point is that the President and everyone else, from the wildest radical to the wildest reactionary, agree that the government should change in response to Quality, even if it doesn't.
Part III, ch. 23, p. 364f
So the thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one's self from one's surroundings. When that is done successfully then everything else follows naturally. Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all. That was what it was about that wall in Korea. It was a material reflection of a spiritual reality.
I think that if we are going to reform the world, and make it a better place to live in, the way to do it is not with talk about relationships of a political nature, which are inevitably dualistic, full of subjects and objects and their relationships to one another; or with programs fulls of things for other people to do. I think that kind of approach starts it at the end and presumes the end is the beginning. Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there. Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value.
Part III, ch. 25, p. 381f
An inquiry into morals
Novel by Robert M. Pirsig. Excerpts from the 1992 Bantam Books paperback edition. 468 pp. ISBN: 0-553-29961-1.
As Einstein said, common sense—non-weirdness—is just a bundle of prejuidices acquired before the age of eighteen. The tests of truth are logical consistency, agreement with experience, and economy of explanation.
ch. 8, p. 113
Almost as great as this "value" platypus is another one handled by the Metaphysics of Quality: the "scientific reality" platypus. This is a very large monster that has been disturbing a lot of people for a long time. It was identified a century ago by the mathematician and astronomer, Henri Poincaré who asked, Why is the reality most acceptable to science one that no small child can be expected to understand?
Should reality be something that only a handful of the world's most advanced physicists understand? One would expect at least a majority of people to understand it. Should reality be expressible only in symbols that require university-level mathemetics to manipulate? Should it be something that changes from year to year as new scientific theories are formulated? Should it be something about which different schools of physics can quarrel for years with no firm resolution on either side? If this is so then how is it fair to imprison a person in a mental hospital for life with no trial and no jury and no parole for "failing to understand reality?" By this criterion shouldn't all but a handful of the world's most advanced physicists be locked up for life? Who is crazy here and who is sane?
In a value-centered Metaphysics of Quality this "scientific reality" platypus vanishes. Reality, which is value, is understood by every infant. It is a universal starting place of experience that everyone is confronted with all the time. Within a Metaphysics of Quality, science is a set of static intellectual patterns describing this reality, but the patterns are not the reality they describe.
ch. 8, p. 118
Historically this assumption by a subject-object metaphysics that all the world is composed of substance put a strain on the Theory of Evolution right from its beginning. At the time of its origin it wasn't yet understood that at the level of photons and electrons and other small particles the laws of cause and effect no longer apply; that electrons and photons simply appear and disappear without individual predictability and without individual cause. So today we have as a result a theory of evolution in which "man" is ruthlessly controlled by the cause-and-effect laws of the universe while the particles of his body are not. The absurdity of this seems to be neglected.
ch. 11, p. 161
But right from the beginning, substance-caused evolution has always had a puzzling aspect that it has never been able to eliminate. It goes into many volumes about how the fittest survive but never once answers the question of why.
This is the sort of irrelevant-sounding question that seems minor at first, and the mind looks for a quick answer to dismiss it. It sounds like one of those hostile, ignorant questions some fundamentalist preacher might think up. But why do the fittest survive? Why does any life survive? It's illogical. It's self-contradictory that life should survive. If life is strictly a result of the physical and chemical forces of nature then why is life opposed to these same forces in its struggle to survive? Either life is with physical nature or it's against it. If it's with nature there's nothing to survive. If it's against physical nature then there must be something apart from the physical and chemical forces of nature that is motivating it to be against physical nature. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that all energy systems "run down" like a clock and never rewind themselves. But life not only "runs up," converting low-energy sea-water, sunlight and air into high-energy chemicals, it keeps multiplying itself into more and better clocks that keep "running up" faster and faster.
ch. 11, p. 161f
Naturally there is no mechanism toward which life is heading. Mechanisms are the enemy of life. The more static and unyielding the mechanisms are, the more life works to evade them or overcome them.
ch. 11, p. 165
If life is to be explained on the basis of physical laws, then the overwhelming evidence that life deliberately works around these laws cannot be ignored. The reason atoms become chemistry professors has got to be that something in nature does not like laws of chemical euquilibrium or the law of gravity or the laws of thermodynamics or any other law that restricts the molecules' freedom. They only go along with laws of any kind because they have to, preferring an existence that does not follow any laws whatsoever.
This would explain why patterns of life do not change solely in accord with causative "mechanisms" or "programs" or blind operations of physical laws. They do not just change valuelessly. They change in ways that evade, override and circumvent these laws. The patterns of life are constantly evolving in response to something "better" than that which those laws have to offer.
This would at first seem to contradict the one thing that evolutionists insist upon most: that life is not responding to anything but the "survival of the fittest" process of natural selection. But "survival of the fittest" is one of those catch-phrases like "mutants" or "misfits" that sounds best when you don't ask precisely what it means. Fittest for what? Fittest for survival? That reduces to "survival of the survivors," which doesn't say anything. "Survival of the fittest" is meaningful only when "fittest" is equated with "best," which is to say, "Quality." And the Darwinians don't mean just any old quality, they mean undefined Quality! As Mayr's article makes clear, they are absolutely certain there is no way to define what that "fittest" is.
ch. 11, p. 165f
If the world consists only of patterns of mind and patterns of matter, what is the relationship between the two? If you read the hundreds of volumes of philosophy available on this matter you may conclude that nobody knows—or at least knows well enough to convince everybody else. There is the materialist school that says reality is all matter, which creates mind. There is the idealist school that says it is all mind, which creates matter. There is the positivist school which says this argument could go on forever; drop the subject.
ch. 12, p. 177
It seems as though a society that is intolerant of all forms of degeneracy shuts off its own Dynamic growth and becomes static. But a society that tolerates all forms of degeneracy degenerates. Either direction can be dangerous. The mechanisms by which a balanced society grows and does not degenerate are difficult, if not impossible, to define.
How can you tell the two directions apart? Both oppose the status quo. Radical idealists and degenerate hooligans sometimes strongly resemble each other.
ch. 17, p. 256
This is really the central problem in the static-Dynamic conflict of evolution: how do you tell the saviors from the degenerates? Particularly when they look alike, talk alike and break all the rules alike? Freedoms that save the saviors also save the degenerates and allow them to tear the whole society apart. But restrictions that stop the degenerates also stop the creative Dynamic forces of evolution.
ch. 17, p. 256
It was the most Dynamic place on earth, but the price of being Dynamic is instability. Any Dynamic situation is vulnerable to attrition and corruption and even to complete collapse. When you take steps forward into the unkown you always risk being smashed by that unkown.
ch. 24, p. 349
All sentient beings are created unequal
Novel by Frank Herbert. Excerpts from the 2002 Tor Book mass market paperback edition. 301 pp. ISBN-10: 0-765-34253-7.
Justice belongs to those who claim it, but let the claimant beware lest he create new injustice by his claim and thus set the bloody pendulum of revenge into its inexorable motion.
Gowachin aphorism
p. 1
All sentient beings are created unequal. The best society provides each with equal opportunity to float at his own level.
The Gowachin Primary
p. 28
Law must retain useful ways to break with traditional forms because nothing is more certain than that the forms of Law remain when all justice is gone.
Gowachin aphorism
p. 46
No! If something's wrong in your societies, what do you do? You create new law. You never think to remove law or disarm the law. You make more law! […]
p. 87
People always devise their own justifications. Fixed and immovable Law merely provides a convenient structure within which to hang your justifications and the prejudices behind them. The only universally acceptable law for mortals would be one which fitted every justification. What obvious nonsense. Law must expose prejudice and question justification. Thus, Law must be flexible, must change to fit new demands. Otherwise, it becomes merely the justification of the powerful.
Gowachin Law
(The BuSab Translation)
p. 141
The attack by those who want to die—this is the attack against which you cannot prepare a perfect defense.
Human aphorism
p. 179
QUESTION: Who governs the governors?
ANSWER: Entropy.Gowachin riddle
p. 189
Your focus determines your reality
The franchise of George Lucas set in a galaxy far, far away…
Always remember: Your focus determines your reality.
Everyone dies. It's the final and only lasting justice
One of several similar story collections edited by Kevin J. Anderson, whose writings I can't stand. Excerpts from the 1996 Bantam Spectra mass market packerback edition. 339 pp. ISBN 0-553-56816-7.
The Tale of Boba Fett
By Daniel Keys Moran. By far the strangest and best story in all the Star Wars collections.
Everyone dies.
It's the final and only lasting Justice. Evil exists; it is intelligence in the service of entropy. When the side of a mountain slides down to kill a village, this is not evil, for evil requires intent. Should a sentient being cause that landslide, there is evil; and requires Justice as a consequence, so that civilization can exist.
There is no greater good than Justice; and only if law serves Justice is it good law. It is said correctly that law exists not for the Just but for the unjust, for the Just carry the law in their hearts, and do not need to call it from afar.
I bow to no one and I give service only for cause.
p. 277f
You can't love life too much, Pleader. The ugly young man smiled, an empty, meaningless movement of the lips, and the Pleader Iving Creel found himself remembering that smile, at odd moments, for the rest of his life. Everyone dies.
p. 279
When all that remained was a smoldering melted mess in the middle of the warehouse, Boba Fett, who thought himself a fair and a just man, slung the flamethrower back over his shoulder, turned about, and walked quietly out of the warehouse, into the dark, silent night, into a future filled with promise.
p. 287
Reality, said Fett, doesn't care if you believe it.
p. 321
It is in the darkest night that the light we are shines brightest
Six stand-alone books spotlighting aspects of the Clone Wars. Notable for the definite Mace Windu and Yoda novels.
Because in my dreams, I always do it right
Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now gone Star Wars, by Matthew Woodring Stover. First Clone Wars novel. Excerpts from the 2004 arrow books mass market paperback edition. 419 pp. ISBN: 0-09-941048-6.
It is in the darkest night that the light we are shines brightest.
ch. 8: Lor Pelek, p. 182
Part One: MEN IN THE JUNGLE
Peace is a product of civilization. The myth of the peaceful savage is precisely that: a myth. Without civilization, all existence is only the jungle. Go to your peaceful savage and burn his crops, or slaughter his herds, or kick him off his hunting grounds. You'll find that he will not remain peaceful for long.
From the private journals of Mace Windu, p. 256
ch. 12: Jungle Rules
Part Two: VICTORY CONDITIONS
Not that I asked her, you understand. No. Not that I ever had the guts to say anything to her. About that. About— He lifted his face to the cold distant stars. About us. It just… it was just, y'know, just never the right time. And I kind of thought she knew. I hope she knew.
ch. 21: Inferno, p. 373
Part Three: SHATTERPOINT
All the things you should have stopped, but didn't
The Yoda book, by Sean Stewart. Sixth and final Clone Wars novel. Excerpts from the 2004 Del Rey mass market paperback edition. 329 pp. ISBN: 0-345-46309-9.
But worse than anything is the memories, he said, more softly still. They crowd around, like flies on meat. Every despicable thing, every petty vice, every little act of spite. […] All the things you should have stopped, but didn't, and nothing will ever be right again. And the things you've done, he whispered. By the pitiless stars, the things you've done…
ch. 1, p. 24f
And to be honest—which Jai Maruk was, even to the one audience to whom people tell their worst lies, himself—
ch. 5, p. 124
The best security, Master Yoda once said, lies in creating a society that nobody wishes to attack.
ch. 6, p. 150
The empty universe, where is it now? Alone are you, Count, and no one your master. Each instant the universe annihilates itself, and starts again. He poked Dokuu in the chest with his stick, hard. Choose, and start again!
ch. 11, p. 310
The galaxy suddenly seemed a more dangerous place by far
Nineteen-volume book series by various authors. I wrote a school paper 27 pages long about it in 2004, curing myself from a minor case of Star Wars book addiction.
Suffering is the fuel in the engine of civilization
The finest, most exceptional and controversial of the over 100 Star Wars books I encountered. By Matthew Woodring Stover. Thirteenth and darkest of The New Jedi Order. Excerpts from the 2002 Del Rey mass market paperback edition. 292 pp. ISBN: 0-345-42865-X.
[…] I say that pain is itself a god: the taskmaster of life. Pain cracks the whip, and all that lives will move. The most basic instinct of life is to retreat from pain. If going here hurts, even a granite slug will go over there; to live is to be a slave to pain. To be 'beyond pain' is to be dead, yes?
One: The Embrace of Pain, p. 20
Part One: DESCENT
Oh, well, yes. That the dead are beyond pain is only an article of faith, isn't it? We should say, we hope that the dead are beyond pain—but there's only one way to find out for sure.
One: The Embrace of Pain, p. 21
Part One: DESCENT
Suffering is the fuel in the engine of civilization.
One: The Embrace of Pain, p. 29
Part One: DESCENT
Is this not what playgrounds are in the New Republic—a place for children to learn the boundaries of behavior? One learns to fight in playground scuffles; one learns politics in playground cliques. It is on the playground that one is initiated into the madness of mobs, the insidious mire of peer pressure, and the final, unthinkable, inarguable unfairness of existence—that some are smarter, others stronger or faster, and no force at your command can make you better than your gifts.
Two: The Nursery, p. 47
Part One: DESCENT
What distinguishes a flower from a weed is only—and exactly—this: the choice of the gardener.
Three: The Garden, p. 62
Part One: DESCENT
But everything you tell yourself should be the truth—or as close to it as you can come. You did what you did because you are who you are. Self-control, or its lack, had nothing to do with it.
Six: Home, p. 123
Part Two: THE CAVE
Light and dark are no more than nomenclature: words that describe how little we understand. She seemed to draw strength from his weakness, slowly managing to sit up. What you call the dark side is the raw, unrestrained Force itself: you call the dark side what you find when you give yourself over wholly to the Force. To be a Jedi is to control your passion… but Jedi control limits your power. Greatness—true greatness of any kind—requires the surrender of control. Passion that is guided, not walled away. Leave your limits behind.
But—but the dark side—
She rose, her smoldering garments wreathing her in coils of smoke. If your surrender leads to slaughter, that is not because the Force has darkness in it. It is because you do.
Eight: Into the Dark, p. 168
Part Two: THE CAVE
See, the thing is, everything everyone tells you is a lie. The truth is always greater than the words we use to describe it.
Twelve: The Light of the True Way, p. 235
Part Three: THE GATES OF DEATH
The only power I have—the only power any of us have—is to be who we are. […]
Thirteen: Glory Sickness, p. 259
Part Three: THE GATES OF DEATH
You need not like someone to love him. Love is nothing more than the recognition that two are one. That all is one.
Epilogue: Lessons, p. 288
The route to mastery is through self-knowledge
By Walter Jon Williams. Fourteenth of The New Jedi Order. Excerpts from the 2002 Del Rey hardcover edition. 448 pp. ISBN: 0-345-42850-1.
Unreasoning passion is the province of darkness, Vergere said. But an understood emotion is not unreasoning. That is why the route to mastery is through self-knowledge. Her tilted eyes widened. It's not possible to suppress all emotion, nor is it desirable. An emotionless person is no more than a machine. But to understand the origin and nature of one's feelings, that is possible.
ch. 15, p. 184
[…] any unreasoning passion would do. When anger becomes rage, fear becomes terror, love becomes obsession, self-esteem becomes vainglory, then a natural and useful emotion becomes an unreasoning compulsion and the darkness is.
ch. 15, p. 184
A master of defense is one who is never in the place that is attacked. […]
ch. 17, p. 221
You're saying that he may have chosen evil. Coldly, not out of a hot passion.
Sometimes people make such choices. Vergere's tone was amused. Usually these people are trivial or silly. Swearing a midnight oath, solemnly intoning, 'I choose evil!'—what a ridiculous picture! But sometimes there may be a genius who chooses to free the dark side within him. […]
ch. 17, p. 225
I cannot help but wonder how much any of us see of what is before us
Gene Wolfe's many-layered masterpiece, a multiple award-winning novel in four parts.
Do you know of the key to the universe?
First part of The Book of the New Sun, winner of the World Fantasy and the British Science Fiction Award.
Once can't found a novel theology on Nothing, and nothing is so secure a foundation as a contradiction. Look at the great successes of the past—they say their deities are the masters of all the universes, and yet that they require grandmothers to defend them, as if they were children frightened by poultry. Or that the authority that punishes no one while there exists a chance for reformation will punish everyone when there is no possibility anyone will become the better for it.
ch. VII: The Conversationalist
[W]hen a gift is deserved, it is not a gift but payment. The only true gifts are such as you now recieve.
ch. XIV: Terminus Est
[…] Do you know of the key to the universe?
Dorcas laughed softly. No, Severian, I who scarcely know my name do not know anything about the key to the universe.
I didn't say that as well as I should have. What I meant was, are you familiar with the idea that the universe has a secret key? A sentence, or a phrase, some say even a single word, that can be wrung from the lips of a certain statue, or read in the firmament, or that an anchorite on a world across the sea teaches his disciples?
Babies know it, Dorcas said. They know it before they learn to speak, but by the time they're old enough to talk, they have forgotten most of it. At least, someone told me that once.
ch. XXXII: The Play
In the final reckoning there is only love
Nebula and Locus Award-winning second part of The Book of the New Sun.
Close your eyes. Try to remember that almost everyone who has ever lived has died, even the Conciliator, who will rise as the New Sun.
ch. IV: The Bouquet
And it came to me that these trees had been hardly smaller when I was yet unborn, and had stood as they stood now when I was a child playing among the cypresses and peaceful tombs of our necropolis, and that they would stand yet, drinking in the last light of the dying sun, even as now, when I had been dead as long as those who rested there. I saw how little it weighed on the scale of things whether I lived or died, though my life was precious to me. And of those two thoughts I forged a mood by which I stood ready to grasp each smallest chance to live, yet in which I cared not too much whether I saved myself or not. By that mood, as I think, I did live; it has been so good a friend to me that I have endeavored to wear it ever since, succeeding not always, but often.
ch. IX: The Liege of Leaves
In the final reckoning there is only love, only that divinity. That we are capable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable sin.
ch. XXI: The Cleansing
And remember what you have not been shown
Third part of The Book of the New Sun, British Fantasy Award winner.
All of us, I suppose, when we think we are talking most intimately to someone else, are actually addressing an image we have of the person to whom we believe we speak.
ch. X: Lead
For clearly, instinct itself cannot have arisen out of nothing—the hawks that soared over our heads built their nests, doubtless, by instinct; yet there must have been a time in which nests were not built, and the first hawk to build one cannot have inherited its instinct to build from its parents, since they did not possess it. Nor could such an instinct have developed slowly, a thousand generations of hawks fetching one stick before some hawk fetched two; because neither one stick nor two could be of the slightest use to the nesting hawks. Perhaps that which came before instinct was the highest as well as the lowest principle of the governance of the will. Perhaps not. The wheeling birds traced their hieroglyphics in the air, but they were not for me to read.
ch. XVIII: Severian and Severian
I think I have never had much need for companionship, unless it was the companionship of someone I could call a friend. Certainly I have seldom wished the conversation of strangers or the sight of strange faces. I believe rather that when I was alone I felt I had in some fashion lost my individuality; to the trush and the rabbit I had been not Severian, but Man. The many people who like to be utterly alone, and particularly to be utterly alone in a wilderness, do so, I believe, because they enjoy playing that part. But I wanted to be a particular person again, and so I sought the mirror of other persons, which would show me that I was not as they were.
ch. XXVII: On High Paths
Think well on all the things we have not told you, and remember what you have not been shown.
ch. XXXV: The Signal
It is hard not to love best what is our own
Final part of The Book of the New Sun, winner of The John W. Campbell Memorial Award.
How shall the state be most vigorous? It shall be most vigorous when it is without conflict. How shall it be without conflict? When it is without disagreement. How shall disagreement be banished? By banishing the four causes of disagreement: lies, foolish talk, boastful talk, and talk which serves only to incite quarrels. […]
ch. V, The Lazaret
Indeed, it often seems to me that of all the good things in the world, the only ones humanity can claim for itself are stories and music; the rest, mercy, beauty, sleep, clean water and hot food (as the Ascian would have said) are all the work of the Increate. Thus, stories are small things indeed in the scheme of the universe, but it is hard not to love best what is our own—hard for me, at least.
ch. XI, Loyal to the Group of Seventeen's Story—The Just Man
Even now I cannot help but wonder how much any of us see of what is before us. For weeks my friend Jonas had seemed to me only a man with a prosthetic hand, […]
ch. XXXII, The Samru
We choose—or choose not—to be alone when we decide whom we will accept as our fellows, and whom we will reject. Thus an erimite in a mountain cave is in company, because the birds and coneys, the initiates whose words live in his "forest books," and the winds—the messengers of the Increate—are his companions. Another man, living in the midst of millions, may be alone, because there are none but enemies and victims around him.
ch. XXXVII, Across the River Again
Legends are rarely gentle
Daniel Keys Moran's ambitious book series.
The fear of being found out drives many people to do things they shouldn't. Yes, you are a fraud. But so is everyone else, and most of us know it. Even good people are only good on average; even bad people are only bad on average. Admittedly, sometimes averages are much higher than others. Don't worry about being a good person or being a bad person; work on improving your average. Work on having good moments, rather than bad moments.
Daniel Keys Moran, interview with Trent the Uncatchable
The Continuing Time Mailing List (2002)
Most people are pretty decent
First Tale of the Continuing Time. Excerpts from the free 2007 ebook edition. 291 pp.
They made plans for they were human, as you and I. And the universe, which cared no more for them than for us, struck them down.
ch. 1, p. 1
The Ancestors, 2029-2053 Gregorian
[B]ut historians are primarily concerned with truth, and a concern for truth can make one leery of those cold facts that might conflict with a precious, closely held truth.
It is better to be a Storyteller.
ch. 2, p. 25
The Ancestors, 2029-2053 Gregorian
You want the Great Truth about Humanity? Most people are pretty decent. They try to be nice guys but they're too lazy or sometimes too tired and they do things they feel sorry for later. A lot of people, most of those who ever make it into a position of power in the real world, are basically pricks. A huge number of them are sociopaths. A fairly small number—and fortunately for us all, a disproportionally large amount of these end up in power also—are kind, decent, just people who are also very, very tough.
ch. 6, p. 108f
Emerald Eyes, 2062 Gregorian
Castanaveras: Do you know what the commonest emotion is?
McKann: I can guess.
Castanaveras: No you can't. Guilt. This vast regret for the things that they've done that are wrong. Those are the people whose minds it hurts to contact, and they are far and away in the majority. The percentage of people who don't suffer from guilt is so vanishingly small I'm tempted to say that such people are not sane. Either they're not sane or the rest of us are not sane, and those of us who feel shame for things we've done far outnumber those who don't.
McKann: Isn't that one of the definitions of a sociopathic personality? The inability to feel guilt?
(Castanaveras is silent a long moment.)
Castanaveras: I'm not referring to such people. There are sociopaths, but not many, at least by percentage of the population. (Silence again.) Some people have—well, the best way I can say it is that they know themselves. They know who they are, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and they are at peace with themselves. Those people, they don't do things that might make them uncomfortable. (Half smiles.) It must be nice.
ch. 8, p. 147
Emerald Eyes, 2062 Gregorian
In all times there are legends. But before the legend, there must be some piece of sharp, shiny truth to catch the light of day and hold it glowing in the midst of night's descend.
Legends are rarely gentle. Gentleness is not remembered so long nor so well as valor or love or greed or death. Great deeds alone do not insure legend, and their lack will not prevent it—the winds of myth can arise from the lowest deserts.
ch. 11, p. 281
Interlude: Earth, November 5, 2068
When you kill, you subtract a possibility from the world
Second Tale of the Continuing Time. Excerpts from the free 2007 ebook edition. 405 pp.
I killed my love to set him free
For fear I'd cause him pain
I killed him—we were very young
And now I'm old againWe lived a life together once
And I was so afraid
For every life I've lived, I've died
For every life I've madeI killed my love to set him free
He wasn't hard to kill
He ran into another life
I guess he's running stillMahliya Kutura, Many Lives
Street Songs, 2078 Gregorian
The Last Summer of His Youth, 2069 Gregorian
I am genetically perfect. Jimmy actually flinched and Trent continued with barely a pause, And it's not my fault.
ch. 7, p. 55
The Last Summer of His Youth, 2069 Gregorian
When you kill, you subtract a possibility from the world.
ch. 7, p. 73
The proper expression of life consists of moving in harmony with the world
One of my all-time favorite novels, the third Tale of the Continuing Time. Excerpts from the free 2007 ebook edition. 621 pp.
I believe in something, because I've felt it in my own life. When I was younger I used to think it was what everybody else called God, and for a little while I did think it might be what Wicca calls the Goddess. But today I admit I don't know what it is, that I have no words for it. And when you insist that what I feel is—or should be—what you have written down on paper, or what you speak in ritual, you lose me, Alaya. And a lot of other people, apparently.
p. 20
Summer: 2075, scene 1
Denice, be wary of people who have answers to your problems. Those answers I have found for myself—the things that strike you as wisdom—are not your answers, and they are only my answers today. Tomorrow I will be a different person with different needs. The world and its people are too complex for any system of beliefs to fully address their complexity. The map does not hold; it can't. When you learn something for yourself, hold to it; but do not expect it to work for others. Sometimes it will. More often it will not.
p. 46
Summer: 2075, scene 4
But if you love yourself, why are you unhappy?
Denice stared at Robert. Does it mean anything at all to you when I tell you that sometimes these days I don't know who the hell I am anymore?
That is a good trick. You love yourself, though you are not sure who you are. Robert Yo nodded, and poured himself another glass of lemonade from the pitcher, and then said, Who do you want to be?
p. 113
Summer: 2075, A Blast from the Past II, scene 2
The salient feature of America—the ways in which the original American Republic was unique in human history to that point—lies in the assumption that humans are wise enough to control their own lives. I am not certain this is an accurate assumption; nonetheless, it is a distinct one. Everything that the Founding Fathers wrote reflects this underlying assumption. They were without exception, even those with religious leanings, strongly anti-Church, because the Church tended to desire the control of the populace's lives in ways the Founding Fathers found abhorrent. They were strongly progun; guns made it possible for a citizen to protect himself from encroachments upon his liberty, even by his own government. They desired a free press because they believed that, in an intellectually free environment humans were wise enough to make decisions that would, ultimately, be beneficial to the larger community. It is clear that this was the original intent of the United States: to provide an environment in which citizens were allowed to make free decisions about the details of their own lives.
p. 193f
Spring: 2076, scene 7
'Sier Obodi, when he should speak of liberty, speaks of loyalty. When he should speak of the need for self-determination, he speaks of the need for wisdom; the implication being that he is wise, and his listeners are not. Where he should instill self-respect, he instills respect for himself. I confess, said the smooth, inhuman voice, I do not understand his effect upon human beings, his charm; he seems to me a dangerous charlatan.
p. 194
Spring: 2076, scene 7
It's important to remember, said Denice softly. But it's more important to forgive.
Should everything be forgiven? Has no one ever done something to you that was such a betrayal, did such violence to your trust, that you could not forgive him?
p. 230
Spring: 2076, scene 9
The proper expression of life consists of moving in harmony with the world. To move in harmony with the world, with other people, with the things of the world, with ourselves; this is the ultimate expression of dance. All living things wish to move well; it is built into them to wish it, for living things that move well are better fit to survive than those that do not.
p. 524
The Tricentennial Summer, scene 21
Remember you don't really own anything you can't carry at a dead run
Unpublished novel; forth Tale of the Continuing Time. Excerpts from the chapters and parts released by Moran in 1994 and 1998, found at his semi-official page.
You can't love life too much, said Reverend Andy. Gives the bastards a hold on you.
Trent the Uncatchable and the Temple of 'Toons, scene 3
2080 Gregorian
Oh, yes. Of course, I understand. You're so enlightened, you love everyone. That's so much safer than loving just one person, isn't it?
Trent the Uncatchable and the Temple of 'Toons, scene 3
2080 Gregorian
In the experiential world of humans, time is measured not by the passage of seconds, but by the passage of events. Reality is measured by its complexity.
Keep your head down—Inch towards daylight—Never fucking surrender
Magnificent book sequence of more-or-less stand-alones by Matthew Woodring Stover.
It's all… ugly. Everything. Ugly damn world, kid.
Hari shrugged. Compared to what?
Act of Violence
The first Act of Caine. Excerpts from the 1999 Del Rey mass market paperback edition. 535 pp. ISBN: 0-345-42145-0.
All great art is ultimately self-portraiture, Caine.
Day Three, scene 2, p. 184
She had been here too many times in her career, had held the hands of too many dying men; she had only the acute perception of something unique, a single irreplaceable life, leaving the world; and the world becoming less, in its absence.
Day Seven, scene 26, p. 520
The greatest joys are expressed in the stillest, smallest, quietest ways.
Epilogue, p. 535
Act of War
Second Act of Caine and the reason why my page is named after Deliann. Excerpts from the 2002 Del Rey mass market paperback edition. 790 pp. ISBN-10: 0-345-42143-4.
The problem with happy endings, Tan'elKoth said, is that nothing is ever really over.
One, scene 5, p. 89
A religion that teaches you God is something outside the world—something separate from everything you see, smell, taste, touch, and hear—is nothing but a cheap hustle.
Eight, scene 4, p. 283
So, Tommie said, that's a pretty good story, huh? Happy endin', anyway.
Sure, Deliann said. If you end it there. But the problem is, it's a true story. He closed his eyes. All true stories end in death.
Ten, scene 6, p. 380
We can each sit and wait to die, from the very day of our births. Those of us who do not do so, choose to ask—and to answer—the two questions that define every conscious creature: What do I want? and What will I do to get it? Which are, finally, only one question: What is my will? Caine teaches us that the answer is always found within our own experience; our lives provide the structure of the question, and a properly phrased question contains its own answer.
Fourteen, scene 3, p. 472
Cainism is not anarchy, but autarchy, she said. Not absence of rule, but self-rule.
It's the same thing.
It may appear so, t'Passe allowed serenly, "if you think of Cainism as advocating autarchy; but we do not. We do not advocate, we merely describe. Autarchy is simple fact. Every day, every thinking creature decides which rules to follow, and which to break. Our reasons for following or breaking these rules may be wildly different, but the fact of choice is identical. Perhaps the only difference between a Cainist and anyone else is that we make these choices consciously, instead of allowing habit to guide us along with the herd. The elKothan Church says: Obey. Love each other. Serve the good of your neighbor. Do not lie. Do not steal. Do not kill.
It is certainly possible for a Cainist to be a faithful elKothan, and a 'good person' by the standards of the Church—the only difference being that the Cainist is aware he is making a choice. He does not obey Ma'elKoth or His Church, he obeys himself.
Fourteen, scene 6, p. 476
"The lesson here is this: The consequence of even the simplest action cannot be reliably predicted over any long term. One cannot control how events unfold, and whether any action is 'good' or 'evil' can only be judged in terms of its consequence—and even that judgement will alter, over time. An action initially judged to be 'good' may later be found to have 'evil' effects—which eventually may be seen, in fact, to be 'good.' Good and evil are, after all, only code words for outcomes we either favor, or of which we disapprove. We all must accept that anything we do, however 'good' it seems at the time, might have consequences that will be too horrible to contemplate.
What then, is the answer? To do nothing? But even inaction has consequences. The essence of Cainism is this: the truly free man chooses his own goals and seeks his own ends, purely for the joy of the choice and the seeking.
Fourteen, scene 8, p. 480f
Is in the sense that the force for which Shiva was a metaphor is entirely real, and still with us. Shiva is power in its purest sense. Absolute motion. Destruction, creation: the same energy informs both. Destructive creation, creative destruction. This isn't a paradox. It isn't. It's a breakdown of language. Destruction and creation are not opposites. They are both opposites of stasis.
[…] The old name—the best name—is Shiva: the Dancer on the Void. The power that shatters order into primordial chaos is the same power that patterns chaos into a new structure of order—because pure chaos is also a kind of stasis, don't you see? Shiva is the enemy of everything that does not change. Shiva's Dance is the play of energy in the cosmos; it's not good, it's not evil, it simply is. It's change itself, and it touches everything.
Fifteen, scene 5, p. 516
[…] No one gets over anything, don't you understand? Everything that happens in your life—every single thing— leaves a scar. A permanent scar. You're not supposed to get over it. To get over something—to erase the mark it left on you—erases part of who you are.
Fifteen, scene 7, p. 524
Darkness is the greatest teacher.
[…]
Darkness is a knife that peels away the rind of what you think you know about yourself. The shades of your pretenses, the tones of your illusions, the layers of deception that glaze your life into the colors that tint your world—all mean nothing in the darkness. No one can see them, not even you.
Darkness hides everything except who you really are.
Seventeen, p. 550
Hari likes to quote Nietzsche: And when you gaze into the abyss, remember that the abyss gazes also into you.
My only reply is the mantra of Conrad's Kurtz.
I am aware that this is yet another failure of character, that other, stronger men do not suffer from the nausea of the void.
Twenty-Six, scene 12, p. 779
The history of both my worlds is replete with monsters called kings, and demons called emperors.
Twenty-Six, scene 12, p. 779
You will be who you will be
Brilliant computer and video game developed by the Austin department of Ion Storm. Most of the dialog was written by Sheldon J. Pacotti, with some revisions and all AI barks done by Austin Grossman. The introduction, endings and the rest of the game world text were created by Chris Todd.
Gold: You can't fight ideas with bullets. Do you ever ask what it's for? The surveillance, the police, the shoot-on-sight laws? Is that freedom?
Conversation: NSF terrorist leader (Leo Gold)
Sam Carter: It's a shame when a difference of opinion gets somebody killed. That's all I have to say about that.
JC Denton: Every war is the result of a difference of opinion. Maybe the biggest questions can only be answered by the greatest of conflicts.
Conversation: Sam Carter
JC Denton: What good's an honest soldier if he can be ordered to behave like a terrorist?
Conversation: Sam Carter
Being a soldier isn't just following orders, it's following those orders in the service of a higher cause. When that cause is betrayed, we're not soldiers anymore—just pieces on a chess board dying for the wrong reasons.
From: SCarter//UNATCO.38239.09421
To: JCDenton//HKNET.450.4347
Subject: SitRef
… If one is to imagine the "perfect sword" that can cut and swing with no resistance, a sword that is an extension of the mind and heart of the warrior who wields it and not a dead weight of steel, then it becomes clear that the sword is of little consequence compared to the will of the strategist. Those who would master the Way must come to understand this: a sword is a tool whose purpose is to cut. Each day the strategist must practice this until it is not practice, but a part of their spirit. The strategist knows that every sword they wield is perfect, for their will is perfect, and it is through their will alone that they win battles…
The True Way
by Kishiro Yoshitaka
Chad: Meaning does not exist a priori. It is order imposed by individuals with arsenals of communication devices. Every inscription, every utterance, every gesture seeks to dominate the plain of meaning.
Conversation: Chad
Nicolette: Only in novels do places crumble to dust for no reason, when their spirit is lost.
Conversation: Nicolette Duclare & Tracer Tong
Morpheus: Human beings feel pleasure when they are watched. I have recorded their smiles as I tell them who they are.
JC Denton: Some people just don't understand the dangers of indiscriminate surveillance.
Morpheus: The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms.
JC Denton: Electronic surveillance hardly inspires reverence. Perhaps fear and obedience, but not reverence.
Morpheus: God and the gods were apparitions of observation, judgment, and punishment. Other sentiments toward them were secondary.
JC Denton: No one will ever worship a software entity peering at them through a camera.
Morpheus: The human organism always worships. First it was the gods, then it was fame (the observation and judgment of others), next it will be the self-aware systems you have built to realize truly omnipresent observation and judgment.
JC Denton: You underestimate humankind's love of freedom.
Morpheus: The individual desires judgment. Without that desire, the cohesion of groups is impossible, and so is civilization. The human being created civilization not because of a willingness but because of a need to be assimilated into higher orders of structure and meaning. God was a dream of good government.
Contact: Prototype AI program (Morpheus)
JC Dencton: And if I do, what becomes of me?
Helios: You will be who you will be. We are our choices.
Ending C
There have always been golden ages, and they have always ended yesterday
Novel by Michael Flynn. Excerpts from the 2004 Tor Book mass market paperback edition. 534 pp. ISBN: 0-765-34033-X.
Everyone dies, he said with a smile as sharp as a blade. Not everyone lives.
p. 38
Bhatterji knew a moment of sadness, of the irretrievable recession of the past. Old friends, gone; old memories, forgotten. Matters known once but to three, then two, now known only to one. He was a good man, he said. A good man. Gorgas's great problem, the engineer decided, was that he would never be Evan Hand.
p. 49
Bigelow Five was possessed of an inquisitive mind. His profession as a troubleshooter had made him so, unless it had been his mind's bent that had led him to troubleshooting. It was a happy marriage, however it came about—certainly happier than any of the other marriages he had essayed—and it afforded him multiple opportunities for enjoyment; for if there is one thing of which the world has no insufficiency, it is trouble worth the shooting.
p. 53
Criticism being a parasitical occupation, every critic needs an artist.
p. 54
There have always been golden ages, and they have always ended yesterday.
p. 72
Associate pleasure with a face and soon the face alone gives pleasure;
p. 94f
And there was this one odd thing about his deference. Because he expected others to know more and to be the best, everyone he worked with did that work just a little bit better. […] What it came down to was this: The little dook was so eager and so grateful and he so obviously expected that all would go well that no one wanted to disappoint him.
So a paradox had emerged even in the short four months that Akhaturian had been aboard. Without ever leading, he had become a leader.
p. 95
For she had once learned an important lesson from an ancient European folk tale about a magic island, a young woman, and her monstrous host; and the lesson was this: that a person must be loved before he becomes lovable.
p. 96
Stephan Gorgas was not a man to verbalize his thoughts, let alone his feelings. That did not mean he lacked for either. He was as silent as Okoye, though for different reasons. Satterwaithe believed him haughty; but he was only a man who thought and felt so clearly that he had no need to realize those inner certainties by saying them aloud. When angry, he seldom shouted. When amused, he seldom laughed. When he had an idea, he saw no need to chat about it.
Yet no man is of a piece. All are motley. Gorgas awoke one morning to the endless sameness of his quarters and felt the urge to talk. Only there was, as there had been for too many years, no one to talk with. He opened his eyes to the same dull, gray walls, the same worn furniture.
He did not immediately unfasten his blanket, but lay a while longer in its grip, staring at nothing, but thinking furiously. It's hard some days, he told Marta's image, which seemed to show surprise at hearing him speak. […] I don't understand the point of going on. It would be different if I were headed somewhere, but I'm not. The days seemed to pass for him with a depressing sameness.
p. 189f
Satterwaithe asked her twice what the holdup was, for there are no tasks more simple than those demanded of others.
p. 222
And, for certain, to worry over what might have been is to worry over what is less than a ghost, for a ghost must have once been in order to be, and the subjunctive mode has not even that much vitality. Yet some folks do linger at the crossroads to stare in horror at what lies down the road not taken.
p. 254
So it has always been in history, Five replied, moving a piece of carnic to his lips. New ways come, old ways go. There is always great talk about how much better—'more human,' you often hear—the old technology was, but you'll notice that no one ever goes back. We don't chip flint arrowheads any more, either.
p. 295
But Mr. Corrigan is a certain kind of man; and by that I mean, a man who is always certain.
I'd think that if he's certain of disaster, he'd worry more'n anyone.
No, Ms. Hidei, though he might accept disaster more than anyone. Worry is something one does, not something one feels. It is an active sort of verb. Why, a man on death row, Gorgas continued with greater animation, accepting the inevitable, can grow as serene as a nun in cloister; but add the prospect of a pardon and he will worry to excess.
p. 334
I wouldn't be afraid to go out, Evermore said. I mean, what are the odds?
On dying? Ratline shrugged. One hundred percent. It's when and how that makes it interesting.
p. 350
Why? she asked him.
And Ratline, who was not known for insight, understood that she did not ask why the geysers were beautiful, but why her friend was missing. He could not see her face through the visor of her suit. All he could see there was the reflection of the sun and the stars. It was as if a galaxy were wearing her suit. Why? There is no why, Okoye. There's only what, and sometimes how. Life has no meaning, so why should death?
p. 396
And is that a good thing?
Ratline had no ready answer to that. He wasn't sure that there were "good things" or "bad things," only "things"—to be borne or not, without complaint. In this, he really was at one with the old pagans. Not the new pagans, with their laurels and solstices and their late, post-Christian reconstructions of a dead past; but the true quill: those stoics who had gazed at all the sorrows of the world without remorse or pity. But while it may be an admirable thing to bear one's sorrows in this manner, it is quite a different thing to bear another's so.
p. 396f
There is a perverse kind of perspective that comes with the passage of time: Those more distant appear larger than in life. They accumulate legend and power like an old holoplex accumulates dust. Given the passage of enough time, they become gods. Their epigones never measure up for the simple reason that they never actually measure against them. It is always the ideal past against the real present, and the ideal always wins because it has been stripped of all its faults.
p. 430
Melancholy twisted within the captain. He felt it stir whenever the conversation lulled; but it did not overwhelm him nor did it show on his hospitable surface as he welcomed his guests, and for that he was grateful. It was important to end well, but what use an ending if there is no story? As Bhatterji had once told Evermore: Everyone dies—it is no signal accomplishment—but not everyone lives. Gorgas had become acutely aware of this lack. He had spent all his life avoiding decisions, confident in his subordination that his hypothetical decisions would have surpassed those actually reached by the men and women he served. He had mistaken hesitancy for judiciousness and had owned the luxury of this mistake for so long as he was not called upon to actually judge. In hindsight (which he had similarly mistaken for wisdom), he always knew that he had ascertained the proper course. The error lay in not recognizing that proper course among so many others also ascertained. He might have spent his remaining days replotting the course of his life, as he had refought so many lost battles, finding triumph at last in worlds that had never been. Instead, he had cooked a meal.
p. 500
He was a kind man, Miko insisted. She did not mean the passenger.
Gorgas nodded. Yes, I suppose he was. It often goes with illusions. Perhaps he was too kind. He felt sorry for each one of us and brought each of us on board, but he should not have brought all of us. He forgot one thing.
I'll not be felt sorry for, said Satterwaithe, not by him.
What was the one thing? asked Bhatterji out of curiosity.
Why, that he was the glue, and he might not be here.
p. 512
All men are frauds
Fantastic trilogy by R. Scott Bakker.
One cannot raise walls against what has been forgotten
First of The Prince of Nothing trilogy. Excerpts from the 2006 Orbit paperback edition. 644 pp. ISBN-10: 1-84149-408-9. ISBN-13: 978-1-84149-408-1.
One cannot raise walls against what has been forgotten.
p. 1
Prologue I: The First Apocalypse
If the world is a game whose rules are written by the God, and sorcerers are those who cheat and cheat, then who has written the rules of sorcery?
ZARATHINUS, A DEFENCE OF THE ARCANE ARTS
Chapter Three: Sumna, p. 84
Part I: The Sorcerer
How the God could be equated with the absence of hesitation was something Achamian had never understood. After all, what was the God but the mystery that burdened them all? What was hesitation but a dwelling within this mystery?
Perhaps, then, I am among the most pious of men, he thought, smiling inwardly.
Chapter Three: Sumna, p. 85f
Part I: The Sorcerer
The world is a circle that possess as many centres as it does men.
AJENCIS, THE THIRD ANALYTIC OF MEN
Chapter Seven: Momemn, p. 216
Part II: The Emperor
Kings never lie. They demand the world to be mistaken.
CONRIYAN PROVERB
Chapter Eight: Momemn, p. 248
Part II: The Emperor
Some say men continually war against circumstances, but I say they perpetually flee. What are the works of men if not a momentary respite, a hiding place soon to be discovered by catastrophe? Life is endless flight before the hunter we call the world.
EKYANNUS VIII, 111 APHORISMS
Chapter Fourteen: The Kuranae Plain, p. 449
Part IV: The Warrior
Faith is the truth of passion. Since no passion is more true than another, faith is the truth of nothing.
AJENCIS, THE FORTH ANALYTIC OF MAN
Chapter Fifteen: Momemn, p. 477
Part V: The Holy War
There's faith that knows itself as faith, Proyas, and there's faith that confuses itself for knowledge. The first embraces uncertainty, acknowledges the mysteriousness of the God. It begets compassion and tolerance. Who can entirely condemn when they're not entirely certain they're in the right? But the second, Proyas, the second embraces certainty and only pays lip service to the God's mystery. It begets intolerance, hatred, violence…
Chapter Fifteen: Momemn, p. 499
Part V: The Holy War
…and that revelation murdered all that I once did know. Where once I asked of the God, Who are you? now I ask, Who am I?
ANKHARLUS, LETTER TO THE WHITE TEMPLE
Chapter Eighteen: The Andiamine Heights, p. 592
Part V: The Holy War
Aside from wonder, there was never any answer
Second of The Prince of Nothing trilogy. Excerpts from the 2006 Orbit paperback edition. 740 pp. ISBN 1-84149-410-0.
Ajencis, he continued, once wrote that all men are frauds. Some, the wise, fool only others. Others, the foolish, fool only themselves. And a rare few fool both others and themselves—they are the rulers of Men… […] What about men who fool no one?
Chapter One: Anserca, p. 12
Part I: The First March
‘They strive,’ Kellhus said, quoting Inri Sejenus, ‘for they know not what. So they cry villainy, and claim others stand in their way’…
Chapter Eight: Mengedda, p. 203
Part I: The First March
It was strange to be known—truly known. To be awaited rather than anticipated. To be accepted instead of believed. To be half another's elaborate habits. To see oneself continually foreshadowed in another's eyes.
Chapter Ten: Atsushan Highlands, p. 261f
Part II: The Second March
The vulgar think the God by analogy to man and so worship Him in the form of the Gods. The learned think the God by analogy to principles and so worship Him in the form of Love or Truth. But the wise think the God not at all. They know that thought, which is finite, can only do violence to the God, who is infinite.
It is enough, they say, that the God thinks them.
MEMGOWA, THE BOOK OF DIVINE ACTS
Chapter Twenty: Caraskand, p. 521
Part III: The Third March
Achamian glanced to his friend, then back to the wrecked shore.
A gull cried out, as gulls always do, in mock agony.
Throughout his life moments like this would visit him—moments of quiet wonder. He thought of them as visitations because they always seemed to arise of their own volition. A pause would descend upon him, a sense of detachment, sometimes warm, sometimes cold, and he would think, How is it I live this life? For the span of several heartbeats, the nearest things—the feel of wind through the hairs of his arm, the pose of Esmenet's shoulders as she fussed over their meagre belongings—would seem very far. And the world, from the taste of his teeth to the unseen horizon, would seem scarcely possible. How? he would silently murmur. How could this be?
Aside from wonder, there was never any answer.
Chapter Twenty-One: Caraskand, p. 585
Part III: The Third March
But then a Shrial Knight, the one named Sarcellus, whose face alone remained pious and devoid of hesitation, answered the Warrior-Prophet in a loud, clear voice.
‘All things both sacred and vile,’ the Knight-Commander said, quoting the Tusk, ‘speak to the hearts of Men, and they are bewildered, and holding out their hands to darkness, they name it light.’
The Warrior-Prophet stared at him sharply, and quoted in turn: ‘Hearken Truth, for it strides fiercely among you, and will not be denied.’
Possessed of a beatific calm, Sarcellus answered: ‘Fear him, for he is the deciever, the Lie made Flesh, come among you to foul the waters of your heart.’
Chapter Twenty-Two: Caraskand, p. 637
Part III: The Third March
What is the meaning of a deluded life?
AJENCIS, THE THIRD ANALYTIC OF MEN
Chapter Twenty-Five: Caraskand, p. 717
Part III: The Third March
Of course we make crutches of one another
Third of The Prince of Nothing trilogy. Excerpts from the 2006 Orbit paperback edition. 503 pp. ISBN-10: 1-84149-411-9. ISBN-13: 978-184149-411-1.
Here we find further argument for Gotagga's supposition that the world is round. How else could all men stand higher than their brothers?
AJENCIS, DISCOURSE ON WAR
Chapter Three: Caraskand, p. 45
The Final March
What would they do, the devout and self-righteous alike? What would they do now that their hallowed scripture could talk back?
Chapter Three: Caraskand, p. 47
The Final March
[T]o be reborn, Proyas had come to realize, one must murder who one was.
Chapter Three: Caraskand, p. 56
The Final March
Conviction, no matter how narcotic its depth, simply did not make true. This was a hard lesson, made all the harder by its astounding conspicousness. Despite the exhortations of kings and generals, despite the endless lays, belief unto death was cheap. After all, the Fanim threw themselves against the spears of their enemies as readily as the Inrithi. Someone had to be deluded. So what ensured that that someone was someone else? Given the manifest frailty of men, given the long succession of delusions that was their history, what could be more preposterous than claiming oneself the least deluded, let alone privy to the absolute?
And to make such obvious conceit the grounds of condemnation … of murder …
Chapter Three: Caraskand, p. 57
The Final March
Of course we make crutches of one another. Why else would we crawl when we lose our lovers?
ONTILLAS, ON THE FOLLY OF MEN
Chapter Six: Xerash, p. 120
The Final March
The Truth of Here is that it is Everywhere. And this, Akka, is what it means to be in love: to recognize the Here within the other, to see the world through another's eyes. To be here together.
Chapter Ten: Xerash, p. 218
The Final March
What frightens me when I travel is not that so many men possess customs and creeds so different from my own. Nay, what frightens me is that they think them as natural and as obvious as I think my own.
SERATANTAS III, SUMNI MEDITATIONS
Chapter Thirteen: Shimeh, p. 263
The Final March
A return to a place never seen. Always is it thus, when we understand what we cannot speak.
PROTATHIS, ONE HUNDRED HEAVENS
Chapter Thirteen: Shimeh, p. 263
The Final March
Vast was the night. Great was the ground.
And yet they yielded. They yielded.
Chapter Fourteen: Shimeh, p. 299
The Final March
Men are forever looking for the one point, the singular fulcrum they can use to dislodge all competing claims. Ignorance does not give us this. What it provides, rather, is the possibility of comparison, the assurance that not all claims are equal. And this, Ajencis would argue, is all that we need. For so long as we admit our ignorance, we can hope to improve our claims, and so long as we can improve our claims, we can aspire to the Truth, even if only in rank approximation.
Drusas Achamian, The Compendium of the First Holy War
Chapter Seventeen: Shimeh, p. 393f
The Final March
Expect not, and you shall find glory everlasting …—The Tractate, Book of Priests, 8:31. The famed Expect Not Admonition of Inri Sejenus, where he urges his followers to give without hope of exchange. The paradox, of course, is that by doing this, they hope for eternal paradise in exchange.
Encyclopedic Glossary, p. 440
sorcery—The practice of making the world conform to language, as opposed to philosophy, the practice of making language conform to the world.
Encyclopedic Glossary, p. 489
Ⓚ All rites reversed