"The greatest obligation of a mother is to support her children, to show them love and respect, and to accept them. Sometimes this is a most difficult task."

"Sometimes the best way to search is to be found."

"There are countless definitions and interpretations of a life well spent, and of the opposite. There are often widely divergent biographies of a particular person. The same individual can be either demon or saint, and even shades of both."

"It is said that one can neither play nor hear the true beauty of music without first having experienced considerable pain. Alas, that may be why I find music to be so sweet."

"Our most effective costumes are the assumptions and preconceptions the audience has about us."

"Memories and lies are painful. But my memories are not lies."

"No one is ever completely forced into his position in life. We all have opportunities to take different paths."

"When others place impossible expectations on a man, he must redefine his goals, and forge his own path. That way at least someone is satisfied."

"In truth, is it better to remember or to forget? We must balance this decision between our history and our humanity."

"It has often been said that it is better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven. This is defeatist talk: I intend to rule everywhere, not just in Hell."

"The gravest error a thinking person can make is to believe that one particular version of history is absolute fact. History is recorded by a series of observers, none of whom is impartial. The facts are distorted by sheer passage of time and — especially in the case of the Butlerian Jihad — thousands of years of humanity's dark ages, deliberate misrepresentations by religious sects, and the inevitable corruption that comes from an accumulation of careless mistakes. The wise person, then, views history as a set of lessons to be learned, choices and ramifications to be considered and discussed, and mistakes that should never again be made."

"War: A manufactory that produces desolation, death, and secrets."

"Good intentions can bring about as much destruction as an evil conqueror. Either way, the result is the same."

"There is a certain momentum to victory...and to defeat."

"The army fosters technology, and technology breeds anarchy because it distributes the terrible machines of destruction. Even before this Jihad, one man alone could create and apply enough violence to ravage an entire planet. It happened! Why do you think the computer became anathema?"

"It is better to be envied than pitied."

"Thoughts become weapons. Philosophies are distinct reasons for war. Good intentions are the most destructive arsenal of all."

"Words are magic."

"He who strikes fastest strikes twice."

"Human beings can always improve themselves. This is one of the advantages they have over thinking machines... until I find the way to mimic all of their senses. And sensibilities."

"Sand keeps the skin clean, and the mind."

"For all their computerized precision, thinking machines can be confused in many different ways."

"Any training school for free citizens must begin by teaching distrust, not trust. It must teach questioning, not acceptance of stock answers."

"It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen."

"Life improves the capacity of the environment to sustain life. Life makes needed nutrients more readily available. It binds more energy into the system through the tremendous chemical interplay form organism to organism."

"The Fremen have a saying: every faintly evil thought must be put aside immediately before it takes root."

"Facts mean nothing when they are preempted by appearance. Do not underestimate the power of impression over reality."

"Discovery is dangerous... but so is life. A man unwilling to take risk is doomed never to learn, never to grow, never to live."

"Like many culinary delicacies, revenge is a dish best savored slowly, after long and delicate preparation."

"Power attracts the corruptible. Absolute power attracts the absolutely corruptible. This is the danger of an entrenched bureaucracy to it's subject population. Even "spoils" systems are preferable because levels of tolerance are lower and the corrupt can be thrown out periodically. Entrenched bureaucracy seldom can be touched short of violence. Beware when Civil service and military join hands!"

"And here lay the magical enticement of prescience, the lure to which Muad'Dib and his Tyrant son had succumbed. The oracle knows what is to come!"

"Thinking you know why you behave as you do gives you all sorts of excuses for extraordinary behavior."

"There's no secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves."

"When you think to take determination of your fate into your own hands, that is the moment you can be crushed. Be cautious. Allow for surprises. When we create, there are always other forces at work."

"Intelligence takes chance with limited data in an arena where mistakes are not only possible but also necessary."

"Ultimately all things are known because you want to believe you know."

"Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty."

"We witness a passing phase of eternity. Important things happen but some people never notice. Accidents intervene. You are not present at episodes. You depend on reports. And people shutter their minds. What good are reports? History in a news account? Preselected at an editorial conference, digested and excreted by prejudice? Accounts you need seldom come from those who make history. Diaries, memoirs and autobiographies are subjective forms of special pleading. Archives are crammed with such suspect stuff."

"Enter no conflict against fanatics unless you can defuse them. Oppose a religion with another religion only if your proofs (miracles) are irrefutable or if you can mesh in a way that the fanatics accept you as god-inspired."