Time is a measure of space, just as a range-finder is a measure of space, but measuring locks us into the place we measure.

The problem of leadership is inevitably: Who will play God?" Muad'Dib

A ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel... he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men... a good ruler has to learn his world's language... it's different for every world... the language of the rocks and growing things... the language you don't hear just with your ears... the Mystery of Life... not a problem to solve, but a reality to experience... Understanding must move with the flow of the process.

Technology tends toward avoidance of risks by investors. Uncertainty is ruled out if possible. People generally prefer the predictable. Few recognize how destructive this can be, how it imposes severe limits on variability and thus makes whole populations fatally vulnerable to the shocking ways our universe can throw the dice.

Governments can be useful to the governed only so long as inherent tendencies toward tyranny are restrained.

Memory never recaptures reality. Memory reconstructs. All reconstructions change the original, becoming external frames of reference that inevitably fall short.

Caution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding, passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve.