To use raw power is to make yourself infinitely vulnerable to greater powers.
Ideas are most to feared when they become actions,” Paul said.
Who asks for justice? We make our own justice.
Every religious, business and governmental question has the single derivative: ‘Who will exercise the power?’ Alliances, combines, complexes, they all chase mirages unless they go for the power. All else is nonsense, as most thinking beings come to realize.
I never could bring myself to trust a traitor,” the Baron said. “Not even a traitor I created.
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?
God created Arrakis to train the faithful.
You must teach me someday how you do that,” he said, “the way you thrust your worries aside and turn to practical matters. It must be a Bene Gesserit thing.” “It’s a female thing,” she said.
Arrakis makes us moral and ethical.
All rebels are closet aristocrats. That’s why I can convert them so easily.
The old woman was a witch shadow – hair like matted spiderwebs, hooded ’round darkness of features, eyes like glittering jewels.
The knife is more dangerous than the hand and the knife can be in either hand.
Seeing all the chattering faces, Paul was suddenly repelled by them. They were cheap masks locked on festering thoughts – voices gabbling to drown out the loud silence in every breast.
How tempting it is to raise high walls and keep out change. Rot here in our own self-satisfied comfort.
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.
Chaos is no surprise. It has predictable characteristics. For one thing, it carries away order and strengthens the forces at the extremes.
Mood’s a thing for cattle or for making love. You fight when the necessity arises, no matter your mood.
Jessica, hearing the voices, felt the depth of the experience, realized what terrible inhibitions there must be against shedding tears. She focused on the words: “He gives moisture to the dead.” It was a gift to the shadow world – tears. They would be sacred beyond a doubt.
Liberal bigots are the ones who trouble me most. I distrust the extremes. Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over any future. Scratch a liberal and find a closet aristocrat. It.
The hunter does not seek dead game.