Dune

"Select your battles carefully. Ultimately, victory and defeat are a matter of your own careful — or reckless — choices."

"The weakness of thinking machines is that they actually believe all the information they receive, and react accordingly."

"In order to understand the meaning of victory, you must first define your enemies...and your allies."

"There is no such thing as the future. Humankind faces multiple possible futures, many of which hinge on seemingly inconsequential events."

"One can compare this new Jihad to a necessary editing process. We are disposing of the things that are destroying us as humans."

"A human lifespan is not always sufficient for a person to achieve greatness. To counter this, some of us have seized more time for ourselves."

"Here is where the analytical power of the thinking machines fails them: they believe they have no weaknesses."

"The future, the past and the present are intertwined, a weave that forms any point in time."

"Endurance. Belief. Patience. Hope. These are the key words of our existence."

"Invention is an art form."

"Peering back through the magnifying glass of time, men and women in the future view the personalities of the Great Revolt as larger-than-life. Such an impression comes not through any distortion of the glass, nor from a process of embellishment that generates mythology. Instead, the heroes of the Jihad were much as they are now remembered; they rose to the occasion when humanity needed them more then ever before."

"Do not count what you have lost. Count only what you still have."

"The coward will not fight. The fool refuses to see necessity. The scoundrel puts himself ahead of humanity. The Zenshiites are all these things."

"Secrets give birth to more secrets."

"Unfortunately, some wars are won by the side that is the most fanatical in a religious sense. The victorious leaders harness the holy energy of collective insanity."

"We are fools to think the battle is ever over. A defeated foe can delude us into letting down our guard... to our eternal sorrow."

"There are a million ways to ask the same question, and a million ways to answer it."

"With all the artillery, ships and manpower in the military, our commanders often forget that ideas can be the greatest weapon of all."

"Even victories take their toll on a man."

"A tool wielded in ignorance can become the most dangerous of weapons."

"Those who refuse to fight against thinking machines are traitors to the human race. Those who do not use every possible weapon are fools."

"The more I study the phenomenon of human creativity, the more mysterious it seems. Their whole process of innovation is elusive, but is critical for us to understand. If we fail in this endeavor, thinking machines are doomed."

"Where one person sees cause of rejoicing, another sees only reason for despair. Pray that you are the former."

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

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

"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."

"He who strikes fastest strikes twice."

"Words are magic."

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

"In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul. It was a warm night at Castle Caladan, and the ancient pile of stone that had served the Atreides family as home for twenty-six generations bore that cooled-sweat feeling it acquired before a change in the weather."

"A popular man arouses the jealousy of the powerful."

"Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place."

"Paul sensed his own tensions, decided to practice one of the mind-body lessons his mother had taught him. Three quick breaths triggered the responses: he fell into the floating awareness...focusing the consciousness...aortal dilation...avoiding the unfocused mechanism of consciousness...to be conscious by choice...blood enriched and swift-flooding the overload regions...one does not obtain food-safety-freedom by instinct alone...animal consciousness does not extend beyond the given moment nor into the idea that its victims may become extinct...the animal destroys and does not produce...animal pleasures remain close to sensation levels and avoid the perceptual...the human requires a background grid through which to see his universe...focused consciousness by choice, this forms your grid...bodily integrity follows nerve-blood flow according to the deepest awareness of cell needs...all things/cells/beings are impermanent...strive for flow-permanence within..."

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

"You've heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There's an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind."

"Hope clouds observation."

"Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."

""We have two chief survivors of those ancient schools: the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild. The Guild, so we think, emphasizes almost pure mathematics. Bene Gesserit performs another function." "Politics," he said. "Kull wahad!" the old woman said. She sent a hard glance at Jessica. "I've not told him. Your Reverence," Jessica said. The Reverend Mother returned her attention to Paul. "You did that on remarkably few clues," she said."

"The drug's dangerous," she said, "but it gives insight. When a Truthsayer's gifted by the drug, she can look many places in her memory — in her body's memory. We look down so many avenues of the past...but only feminine avenues." Her voice took on a note of sadness. "Yet, there's a place where no Truthsayer can see. We are repelled by it, terrorized. It is said a man will come one day and find in the gift of the drug his inward eye. He will look where we cannot — into both feminine and masculine pasts." "Your Kwisatz Haderach?" "Yes, the one who can be many places at once: the Kwisatz Haderach. Many men have tried the drug . . . so many, but none has succeeded." "They tried and failed, all of them?" "Oh, no." She shook her head. "They tried and died."

"To attempt an understanding of Muad'Dib without understanding his mortal enemies, the Harkonnens, is to attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing Darkness. It cannot be."

"In politics, the tripod is the most unstable of all structures."

"You well know the weakness there! Shield your son too much, Jessica, and he'll not grow strong enough to fulfill any destiny."

"That which submits rules....The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows — a wall against the wind. This is the willow's purpose."

"A world is supported by four things...the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing... without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!"

"The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience."

"A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it."

"In shield fighting, one moves fast on defense, slow on attack. Attack has the sole purpose of tricking the opponent into a misstep, setting him up for the attack sinister. The shield turns the fast blow, admits the slow kindjal!"

"Mood? What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises — no matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It's not for fighting."

"If wishes were fishes, we'd all cast nets."

"Polish comes from the cities; wisdom from the desert."