Many things we do naturally become difficult only when we try to make them intellectual subjects. It is possible to know so much about a subject that you become totally ignorant.
When strangers meet, great allowance should be made for differences of custom and training.
Words are such gross machinery, so primitive and ambiguous.
The act of saying that things exist that cannot be described in words shakes a universe where words are the supreme belief.
Words can carry any burden we wish. All that’s required is agreement and a tradition upon which to build.
Since every individual is accountable ultimately to the self, the formation of that self demands our utmost care and attention.
It is not the present which unfluences the future, thou fool, but the future which forms the present. You have it all backward. Since the future is set, an unfolding of events which will assure that future is fixed and inevitable.
Membership in a conspiracy, as in an army, frees people from the sense of personal responsibility.
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.
One must cast off old agonies as a snake casts off its skin – only to grow a new set and accept all of their limitations.
You can’t build politics on love. People aren’t concerned with love; it’s too disordered. They prefer despotism. Too much freedom breeds chaos.
Machine makers always run the risk of becoming totally machine.
We Bene Gesserit sift people to find the humans.
That is one of the Law’s purposes, of course: to test the qualities of those who choose to employ it.
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?
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.
Radicals are only to be feared when you try to suppress them. You must demonstrate that you will use the best of what they offer.
The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in.
A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating.
Ambitions tend to remain undisturbed by realities.