𝙸𝙼𝙿𝙴𝚁𝙸𝙰𝙻 𝙶𝙷𝙾𝚂𝚃.

Rita Dove, from Playlist for the Apocalypse: Poems; "Ghettoland: Exeunt"

Foundation (2021-)

"something cannot emerge from nothing."

"any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere."

"the mind commands the body and it obeys."

"desperate people are the most dangerous."

"the concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future."

"hard tasks need hard ways."

"you must teach me someday how you do that, the way you thrust your worries aside and turn to practical matters."

"i cause pain out of necessity."

"you must learn to rule. it's something none of your ancestors learned."

"people need hard times to develop psychic muscles."

"what is important for a leader is that which makes him a leader."

"the people who can destroy a thing, they control it."

"be prepared to appreciate what you meet."

"take your time and be sure."

"it is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future."

"survival is the ability to swim in strange water."

"you fight when the necessity arises—no matter the mood!"

"even occasional greatness will destroy a man."

"humans are almost always lonely."

"my father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality."

"greatness is a transitory experience. it is never consistent."

"from the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain."

"climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it's a mountain."

"knowing where the trap is—that's the first step in evading it."

"may this place give you as much pleasure as it has given me."

"paradise on my right, hell on my left and the angel of death behind."

"try looking into that place where you dare not look! you'll find me there, staring out at you!"

"it's shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult."

"i often wonder in these later days if anything about him was as it seemed."

"the storm passed through us and around us, it's gone, but we remain."

"the mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience."

"mood's a thing for cattle or making love, it's not for fighting."

"fear is the mind-killer, fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration."

"when you imagine mistakes, there can be no self-defense."

"hope clouds observation."

"one should never presume one is the sole object of a hunt."

"if you rely only on your eyes, your other senses weaken."

"science is made up of so many things that appear obvious after they are explained."

"what senses do we lack that we cannot see or hear another world all around us?"

"the power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it."

"highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new."

"i should like friendship with you ... and trust."

"a killer with the manners of a rabbit—this is the most dangerous kind."

"once you've given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject."

"prophets have a way of dying by violence."

"do as she says, you wormfaced, crawling, sand-brained piece of lizard turd!"

"this world has emptied me of all but the oldest purpose: tomorrow's life."

"a ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel."

"the mind can go either direction under stress—toward positive or toward negative: on or off.

"the human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who so survive."

"a stone is heavy and the sand is weighty; but a fool's wrath is heavier than them both."

"greatness is a transitory experience, it is never consistent."

"do not count a human dead until you’ve seen his body, and even then you can make a mistake."

"but it’s a human trait that when we encounter personal problems."

"but it's well known that repression makes a religion flourish."

"the person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."

"i am not the kind of person i want to be."

"there was no mercy where there could be no stopping."

"your life is stolen."

"the hunter does not seek dead game."

"are you already training my replacement?"

"we tend to flounder around, blaming everything but the actual, deep-seated thing that’s really chewing on us."

"where the fear has gone there will be nothing. only i will remain."

"what do you despise? by this are you truly known."

"i should've suspected trouble when the coffee failed to arrive."

"sad? nonsense! parting with friends is a sadness. a place is only a place."

"who asks for justice? we make our own justice."

"behold, as a wild ass in the desert, go i forth to my work."

"in such perfection, all things move towards death."

"there is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man—with human flesh."

"i never could bring myself to trust a traitor."

"i must not fear."

"a plan depends as much upon execution as it does upon concept."

"what is the son but an extension of the father?"

"you have eyes, yet cannot see without light."

"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 have always known."

"it's easier to be terrified by an enemy you admire."

"fear is the mind-killer."

"the way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training."

"to accept a little death is worse than death itself."

"life produces a different taste each time you take it."

"it's what we were meant to do."

"i see us giving love to each other in a time of quiet between storms."

"a popular man arouses the jealousy of the powerful."

"don't sit with your back to any doors."

"there's steel in this man that no one has taken the temper out of..."

"any man who retreats into a cave which has only one opening deserves to die."

"we went soft, we lost our edge."

"you can’t buy security."

"we faced it and did not resist."

"thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."

"there is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors."

"it is so shocking to find out how many people do not believe that they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult."

"what has mood to do with it?"

“You’ve heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There’s an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind.”