“I will offer one bit of a useful state of mind, which — if one adopts it — makes everything much easier: to accept reality as it is, and to try not to regret the past, and try to improve the situation. And the reason I say it is because it's so hard to adopt it. It's so easy to think, 'Oh, like some bad past decision, or bad stroke of luck, something happened, something is unfair' — and it's so easy to spend so much time thinking like this. While it's just so much better and more productive to say, 'Okay, things are the way they are. What's the next best step?' And I find that whenever I do this myself, everything works out so much better. But it's hard. It's hard. It's a constant struggle with one's emotion, and that's why I mention it to you. Perhaps some of you will adopt it yourself. This is a reminder to adopt this mindset as best as one can — and also a reminder for myself.”
“The only safe procedure for you, now that you have started, is to make sure from this day forward until the day you are buried, you do two things each day. First, master a difficult old insight, and second, add some new piece of knowledge to the world each day. Now does that seem extravagant?”
“If you are able to state a problem — any problem — and if it is important enough, then the problem can be solved.”
“There's a rule they don't teach you at Harvard Business School. It is: If anything is worth doing, it's worth doing to excess.”
“My whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn't know they had.”
“You know better than to kill an idea without giving it a chance to live. We set our sights high. That's why we accomplish so many things. Now go back and try again.”
“Once when I was trying to sell Mickey Mouse, a fellow told me something. He said, 'Mickey Mouse? What is it? Nobody knows it... They don't know you and they don't know your mouse.' That hit me. I said, from now on they're going to know. And I stuck Mickey Mouse so darn big on that title that they couldn't think it was a rabbit or anything else.”
“On a given day, a given circumstance, you think you have a limit. And you then go for this limit and you touch this limit, and you think, 'Okay, this is the limit'. And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.”
“Many have marked the speed with which Muad'Dib learned the necessities of Arrakis. The Bene Gesserit, of course, know the basis of this speed. For the others, we can say that Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. 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.”
“When I look back on the perils which have been overcome, upon the great mountain waves through which the gallant ship has driven, when I remember all that has gone wrong and remember also all that has gone right, I feel sure we have no need to fear the tempest. Let it roar, and let it rage. We shall come through.”
“History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.”
“In war, which is an intense form of life, Chance casts aside all veils and disguises and presents herself nakedly from moment to moment as the direct arbiter over all persons and events.”
“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”
“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”
“There is nothing quite like ignorance combined with a driving need to succeed to force rapid learning.”
“You can't learn everything, but you have to convince yourself that you can learn anything.”
“In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn't read all the time — none, zero.”