My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something cannot emerge from nothing,' he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable 'the truth' can be.
Frank HerbertRead
Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your life. The object can be stated this way: Live the best life you can. Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck. Darwi Odrade - Chapterhouse: Dune
Interpretation
What this quote means
Life requires active participation to truly experience and understand it.
This quote emphasizes that merely observing life without engaging in it leads to a missed opportunity for growth and fulfillment. It suggests that actively participating in life is essential to learning its intricacies and creating one’s own luck, rather than passively waiting for fortune to arrive.
Themes
LifeParticipationEngagementLuckExperience
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about embracing challenges.
More from Frank Herbert
All quotes →If you need something to worship, then worship life - all life, every last crawling bit of it! We're all in this beauty together!
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To know a thing well, know it's limits; Only when pushed beyond it's tolerance will it's true nature be seen. -The Amtal Rule
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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.
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It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.
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