“Set patterns, incapable of adaptability, of pliability, only offer a better cage. Truth is outside of all patterns.”
Variant: All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.
Source: Tao of Jeet Kune Do
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Bruce Lee 193
Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and f… 1940–1973Related quotes
“There is only the pattern; the pattern is all the universe, creator and created.”
“Old Hundredth” p. 162 (originally published in New Worlds Science Fiction #100, November 1960)
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)
Context: When the first flint, the first shell, was shaped into a weapon, that action shaped man. As he molded and complicated his tools, so they molded and complicated him. He became the first scientific animal. And at last, via information theory and great computers, he gained knowledge of all his parts. He formed the Laws of Integration, which reveal all beings as part of a pattern and show them their part in the pattern. There is only the pattern; the pattern is all the universe, creator and created.
Source: Insecure at Last
“We are all part of some cosmic pattern, and this pattern works toward good and not evil.”
Ardath in The Creature from Beyond Infinity (1940)
Short fiction
Context: We are all part of some cosmic pattern, and this pattern works toward good and not evil. It builds and does not destroy. So I shall go on in my search for a race where I can find kinship and happiness.
Source: Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; Design Devices and Filter Devices, p. 316
Context: Some communities will be abandoned, others will struggle along, others will split, others will flourish, gain members, and be duplicated elsewhere. Each community must win and hold the voluntary adherence of its members. No pattern is imposed on everyone, and the result will be one pattern if and only if everyone voluntarily chooses to live in accordance with that pattern of community.
“Nothing is less forgiven than setting Patterns Men have no mind to follow.”
Princes (their Rewards of Servants).
Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Political Thoughts and Reflections
Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 38, And So Time Passes
Context: Time. Particles of darkness configured mysterious patterns on my retina. Patterns that degenerated without a sound, only to be replaced by new patterns. Darkness but darkness alone was shifting, like mercury in motionless space. I put a stop to my thoughts and let time pass. Let time carry me along. Carry me to where a new darkness was configuring yet newer patterns.
