If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.
It became apparent to the Fremen that Kynes was not a madman totally, just mad enough to be holy.
When your actions describe a system of evil consequences, you should be judged by those consequences and not by your explanations.
That girl! She was like a touch of destiny.
Given the right lever you can move a planet.
And his father was right: trying for some ultimate control of the universe, you only built weapons with which the universe eventually defeated you.
When you live upon Arrakis,” she had said, “khala, the land is empty. The moons will be your friends, the sun your enemy.
There will be sadness,” Alia intoned. “I remind you that all things are but beginning, forever beginning. Worlds wait to be conquered. Some within the sound of my voice will attain exalted destinies. You will sneer at the past, forgetting what I tell you now: within all differences there is unity.
Concealed behind strong barriers the heart becomes ice.
Show no mercy. Never stop. Mercy is a chimera. It can be defeated by the stomach rumbling its hunger, by the throat crying its thirst.
Think of all those experiences, the wisdom they’d bring. But wisdom tempers love, doesn’t it? And it puts a new shape on hate.
The man without emotions is the one to fear.
Freedom is a lonely state.
Have you noticed, Stil, how beautiful the young women are this year?
Peace punishes mistakes without rewarding brilliance.
He felt that his mentat faculties had been dulled, let out a long, shuddering breath. A psychic shadow passed over him. In the emotional darkness of it, he felt himself waiting for some absolute sound – the snap of a branch in a jungle.
Just as individuals are born, mature, breed, and die, so do societies and civilizations and governments.
Guilt and blame grew defuse when memory covered a millennia.
Atrocity has no excuses, no mitigating argument. Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. It is self-perpetuating upon itself – a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred.
You cannot go on forever stealing what you need without regard to those who come after. The physical qualities of a planet are written into its economic and political record. We have the record in front of us and our course is obvious.
Beware of the truth, gentle Sister. Although much sought after, truth can be dangerous to the seeker. Myths and reassuring lies are much easier to find and believe. If you find a truth, even a temporary one, it can demand that you make painful changes.