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.
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.
A good ruler has to learn his world’s language, and that’s different for every world, the language you don’t hear just with your ears.
A leader tries to perpetuate the conditions which demand his leadership. Thus, the leader requires the outsider.
He understood terrible purposes. They drove against all odds. They were their own necessity. Paul felt that he had been infected with terrible purpose. He did not know yet what the terrible purpose was.
Power bases are very dangerous because they attract people who are truly insane, people who seek power only for the sake of power.
When we encounter personal problems, those things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan.
Inflection is the adjective of language. It carries the subtleties of delight and horror, the essence of culture and social process.
Is God troubled?” And her companion replied: “The sins of this universe would trouble anyone.
People want order, this kind or some other. They sit in the prison of their hungers and see that war has become the sport of the rich. That’s a dangerous form of sophistication. It’s disorderly.
My son will wear the title well, the Duke thought, and realized with a sudden chill that this was another death thought.
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?
Chani sat back on her heels, submerging her fears in thought as she studied Paul’s face. This was a trick she had learned from watching the Reverend Mothers. Time could be made to serve the mind.
Nothing wins more loyalty for a leader than an air of bravura,” the Duke said. “I, therefore, cultivate an air of bravura.
We do not teach history; we recreate the experience. We follow the chain of consequences – the tracks of the beast in its forest. Look behind our words and you see the broad sweep of social behavior that no historian has ever touched.
The Zensunni approach to birth,” he said, urging her even faster, “is to wait without purpose in the state of highest tension. Do not compete with what is happening. To compete is to prepare for failure. Do not be trapped by the need to achieve anything. This way, you achieve everything.
It is said of Muad’Dib that once when he saw a weed trying to grow between two rocks, he moved one of the rocks. Later, when the weed was seen to be flourishing, he covered it with the remaining rock. “That was its fate,” he explained.
When God hath ordained a creature to die in a particular place, He causeth that creature’s wants to direct him to that place.
Growing older is to grow more wicked.
Do as she says, you wormfaced, crawling, sand-brained piece of lizard turd!