There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.
The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.
Whether a thought is spoken or not it is a real thing and it has power,” Tuek said. “You might find the line between life and death among the Fremen to be too sharp and quick.
The truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it.
To be a god can ultimately become boring and degrading. There’d be reason enough for the invention of free will! A god might wish to escape into sleep and be alive only in the unconscious projections of his dream-creatures.
Irreverence is a most necessary ingredient of religion. Not to speak of its importance in philosophy. Irreverence is the only way left to us for testing our universe.
Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.
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.
There is only one true wealth in all the universe–living time.
the meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture – it begins in the dignity with which we treat the dead
Then, as his planet killed him, it occurred to Kynes that his father and all the other scientists were wrong, that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error.
There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.
The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.
They are not mad. They’re trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.
Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, ‘I am not the kind of person I want to be.’ It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied.
But it’s well known that repression makes a religion flourish.
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.
In 1054, the patriarch of Constantinople and the pope excommunicated each other. That was the end of holiness for both churches.
Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is the task of Religion to fit man into this lawfulness.
The Fremen have a simple, practical religion,” he said.“Nothing about religion is simple.
One learns from books and example only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things.
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.
Ready comprehension is often a knee-jerk response and the most dangerous form of understanding. It blinks an opaque screen over your ability to learn. Be warned. Understand nothing. All comprehension is temporary.
A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.
Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.
Try looking into that place where you dare not look! You’ll find me there, staring out at you!
Face your fears or they will climb over your back.
motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches.
You have a nicety of awareness of the difference between a blade’s edge and its tip.
It is far better to win a battle through skilled leadership and wise decisions than violence and bloodshed. It may not seem as glorious to the uninitiated, but in the end it results in fewer wounds–of any kind.
Governments always commit their entire populations when the demands grow heavy enough. By their passive acceptance, these populations become accessories to whatever is done in their name.
Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.
Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual. -Words of Muad’dib by Princess Irulan.
Democracy is susceptible to being led astray by having scapegoats paraded in front of the electorate. Get the rich, the greedy, the criminals, the stupid leader and so on ad nauseam.
Create or arouse such unbridled forces and you built carnal fantasies of enormous complexity. You could lead whole populations around by their desires, by their fantasy projections.
Move slowly and the day of your revenge will come,” Tuek said. “Speed is a device of Shaitan. Cool your sorrow–we’ve the diversions for it; three things there are that ease the heart–water, green grass, and the beauty of woman.
Give as few orders as possible,” his father had told him once long ago. “Once you’ve given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.
Any man who retreats into a cave which has only one opening deserves to die.
I must rule with eye and claw — as the hawk among lesser birds. – Duke Leto Atreides
It doesn’t follow that the riots mean permanent hostility toward him.
My son will wear the title well, the Duke thought, and realized with a sudden chill that this was another death thought.
He uses the nice old words so rich in tradition to be sure I know he means it.
There are proven ways to win the loyalty of tough, strong, ferocious men: play on the certain knowledge of their superiority, the mystique of secret covenant, the esprit of shared suffering.
I never thought it would be easy to serve God,” she said. “I just didn’t think it would be this hard.
Education is no substitute for intelligence. That elusive quality is defined only in part by puzzle-solving ability. It is in the creation of new puzzles reflecting what your senses report that you round out the definition.
Every civilization depends on the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness– they cannot work and their civilization collapses
Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect any who seek it.
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities.
Deceit is a tool of statecraft,” Irulan agreed.”There are limits to power, as those who put their hopes in a constitution always discover,” Paul said.
On Caladan, we ruled with sea and air power,” the Duke said. “Here, we must scrabble for desert power. This is your inheritance, Paul.
One must always keep the tools of statecraft sharp and ready. Power and fear – sharp and ready.
Dune was a world of paradox now—a world under siege, yet the center of power. To come under siege, he decided, was the inevitable fate of power.
Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.
Each of us comes into being knowing who he is and what he is supposed to do.’ … ‘Small children know,’ Leto said. ‘It’s only after adults have confused them that children hide this knowledge even from themselves.
We had something few experience. We were joined in our strengths rather than in our weaknesses.
The people who demand that the oracle predict for them really want to know next year’s price on whalefur or something equally mundane. None of them wants an instant-by-instant prediction of his personal life.
A single obscure decision of prophecy, perhaps the choice of one word over another, could change the entire aspect of the future. He tells us “The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door.
It is difficult to live in the present, pointless to live in the future and impossible to live in the past.
Life cannot find reasons to sustain it, cannot be a source of decent mutual regard, unless each of us resolves to breathe such qualities into it.
The great mass of humankind possesses an unmistakable unit-identity. It can be one thing. It can act as a single organism.
Dangers lurk in all systems. Systems incorporate the unexamined beliefs of their creators. Adopt a system, accept its beliefs, and you help strengthen the resistance to change
Do actions agree with words? There’s your measure of reliability. Never confine yourself to the words.
To accept a little death is worse than death itself.
He felt the inability to grieve as a terrible flaw.
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.
But one learns from books and reels only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things.
We accept too damned many things on the explanations of people who could have good reasons for lying.
Fannie Mae had aroused his anger, then reduced his anger to verbal breast-beating, and finally to silent hurt. Still, the love remained. Why?
Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place.
This wise man observed that wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.
Growth is limited by the necessity which is present in the least amount. And naturally, the least favorable condition controls the growth rate
Small souls who seek power over others first destroy the faith those others might have in themselves.
Every man carries his own past with him,” Hayt said.
The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called “spannungsbogen” — which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.
Black is a blind remembering, she thought. You listen for pack sounds, for the cries of those who hunted your ancestors in a past so ancient only your most primitive cells remember. The ears see. The nostrils see.
I am a leg of the death tripod that will destroy our foes.
Most discipline is hidden discipline, designed not to liberate but to limit. Do not ask Why? Be cautious with How? Why? leads inexorably to paradox. How? traps you in a universe of cause and effect. Both deny the infinite.
You can not go on forever stealing what you need without regard to those who come after.
I don’t speak, I operate a machine called language. It creaks and groans, but is mine own.
It has occurred to me more than once that holy boredom is good and sufficient reason for the invention of free will.
No matter how much we ask after the truth, self-awareness is often unpleasant. We do not feel kindly toward the Truthsayer.
How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him.
The test of a man isn’t what you think he’ll do. It’s what he actually does.
I come only to ask a simple question. Is Muad’Dib’s death to be followed by the moral suicide of all men? Is that the inevitable aftermath of a Messiah?
Money said, “I warn you that ignorance thrives on hysteria.
There are many degrees of sight and many degrees of blindness. What senses do we lack that we cannot see another world all around us?
Does a population have informed consent when that population is not taught the inner workings of its monetary system, and then is drawn, all unknowing, into economic adventures?
He’s taking the change well?” She asked.Except for getting a bit overtired. He’s excited, but what 15-year-old wouldn’t be under these circumstances?
The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door.’ And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning, ‘That path leads ever down into stagnation.
Life produces a different taste each time you take it.
He realized suddenly that it was one thing to see the past occupying the present, but the true test of prescience was to see the past in the future. Things persisted in not being what they seemed.
Whether a thought is spoken or not, it is a real thing and has powers of reality.
When we encounter personal problems, those things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan.
When strangers meet, great allowances should be made for differences in custom and training.
Reason is the first victim of strong emotion,” Scytale murmured.
To exist is to stand out, away from the background,” The Preacher said. “You aren’t thinking or really existing unless you’re willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgment of your existence.
Use the first moments in study. You may miss many an opportunity for quick victory in this way, but the moment the study are in insurance of success. Take your time and be sure.
The Atreides are known to start late getting there growth.
Cynicism! That, no doubt is a greater crime than heresy.
What delicious abandon in the sleep of the child. Where do we lose it?
You must teach me the way you thrust your worries aside and turn to practical matters.
I point out to you, Marcus Claire Luyseyal, a lesson from past over-machined societies which you appear not to have learned. The devices themselves condition theusers to employ each other the way they employ machines.
I have said: “Blow out the lamp! Day is here!” And you keep saying: “Give me a lamp so I can find the day.
You see, gentlemen, they have something to die for. They’ve discovered they’re a people. They’re awakening.
A killer with the manners of a rabbit – this is the most dangerous kind.
What was it St. Augustine said? “The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.
And the question of Wester religion,” Flattery said, “is: What lies beyond death? But the question of the Zen master is: What lies beyond waking?
Hayt felt suddenly that he existed in a dream controlled by some other mind, and that he might momentarily forget this to become lost in the convolutions of that mind.
But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, “Well, now it’s writing time and now I’ll write.
The knife is more dangerous than the hand and the knife can be in either hand.
Nothing wins more loyalty for a leader than an air of bravura,” the Duke said. “I, therefore, cultivate an air of bravura.
If you focus your awareness only upon your own rightness, then you invite the forces of opposition to overwhelm you.
One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp too strongly is to be taken over by power, and thus to become its victim.
Then are there no rules at all, Lord?” Moneo’s voice conveyed a faint hint of hysteria.Leto smiled to ease the man’s tensions. “Perhaps one. Short–term decisions tend to fail in the long–term.
For what do you hunger, Lord?” Moneo ventured.“For a humankind which can make truly long-term decisions. Do you know the key to that ability, Moneo?”“You have said it many times, Lord. It is the ability to change your mind.
Mood’s a thing for cattle or for making love. You fight when the necessity arises, no matter your mood.
Wild Fremen said it well: “Four things cannot be hidden — love, smoke, a pillar of fire and a man striding across the open bled.
You do not beg the sun for mercy.-Maud’dib’s Travail from The Stilgar Commentary
As long as my Duke remains unmarried some of the Great Houses can still hope for alliance.
And loyalty is a valued commodity. It can be sold . . . not bought, but sold.
We have a disturbed relationship with our past which religion cannot explain. We are primitive in unexplainable ways, our lives woven of the familiar and the strange, the reasonable and the insane.
A popular man arouses the jealousy of the powerful.
How would we flood village and city with our information? The people must learn how well I govern them. How would they know if we didn’t tell them?
Religion, too, is a weapon. What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government?
Police are inevitably corrupted. … Police always observe that criminals prosper. It takes a pretty dull policeman to miss the fact that the position of authority is the most prosperous criminal position available.
Caution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding, passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve.
Chance is the nature of our universe. […] madness represents a chaotic reservoir of surprises. Some surprises can be valuable.
He straightened, assuming an odd attitude of dignity – as though it were another mask.
The price we paid was the price men have always paid for achieving a paradise in this life–we went soft, we lost our edge.
No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero
What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises—no matter the mood! Mood’s a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It’s not for fighting.
Do you wrestle with dreams? Do you contend with shadows? Do you move in a kind of sleep? Time has slipped away. Your life is stolen. You tarried with trifles, Victim of your folly.
We will not run,” Paul said. “We’ll move with dignity. We’ll do what must be done.
Since every individual is accountable ultimately to the self, the formation of that self demands our utmost care and attention.
Respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. Something cannot emerge from nothing.
Respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality.
The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.
Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.
One of the best things to come out of the home computer revolution could be the general and widespread understanding of how severely limited logic really is.
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.