All Quotes

"Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never persistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man."

"There is no escape — we pay for the violence of our ancestors."

"Is it defeatist or treacherous for a doctor to diagnose a disease correctly? My only intention is to cure the disease."

"Anything outside yourself, this you can see and apply your logic to it. But it's a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, these things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. We tend to flounder around, blaming everything but the actual, deep-seated thing that's really chewing on us."

"Do you wrestle with dreams? Do you contend with shadows? Do you move in a kind of sleep? Time has slipped away. Your life is stolen. You tarried with trifles. Victim of your folly."

"There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles."

"Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife — chopping off what's incomplete and saying: "Now it’s complete because it’s ended here.""

"One thought remained to him. Leto saw it in formless light on rays of black: The day the flesh shapes and the flesh the day shapes. The thought struck him with a sense of fullness he knew he could never explain."

"Be prepared to appreciate what you meet."

"My father once told me that respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. "Something cannot emerge from nothing," he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable "the truth" can be."

"Muad'Dib could indeed see the Future, but you must understand the limits of this power. Think of sight. You have eyes, yet cannot see without light. If you are on the floor of a valley, you cannot see beyond your valley. Just so, Muad'Dib could not always choose to look across the mysterious terrain. He tells us that a single obscure decision of prophecy, perhaps the choice of one word over another, could change the entire aspect of the future. He tells us "The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door." And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning "That path leads ever down into stagnation.""

"What do you despise? By this you are truly known."

"There existed no need on Caladan to build a physical paradise or a paradise of the mind — we could see the actuality all around us. And the price we paid was the price men have always paid for achieving a paradise in this life — we went soft, we lost our edge."

"A stone is heavy and the sand is weighty; but a fools wrath is heavier than them both."

"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."

"The mind can go either direction under stress — toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training."

"The highest function of ecology is understanding consequences."

"We are generalists. You can't draw neat lines around planet-wide problems. Planetology is a cut-and-fit science."

"Science is made up of so many things that appear obvious after they are explained."

"You cannot go on forever stealing what you need without regard for 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 clear."

"No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero."

"Then, as his planet killed him, it occurred to Kynes that his father and all the other scientists were wrong, that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error."

"Prophecy and prescience — How can they be put to the test in the face of the unanswered questions? Consider: How much is actual prediction of the "wave form" (as Muad'Dib referred to his vision-image) and how much is the prophet shaping the future to fit the prophecy? What of the harmonics inherent in the act of prophecy? Does the prophet see the future or does he see a line of weakness, a fault or cleavage that he may shatter with words or decisions as a diamond-cutter shatters his gem with a blow of a knife?"

"To save one from a mistake is a gift of paradise."

"The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called "spannungsbogen" — which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing."

"The vision made him want to freeze into immobility, but this, too, was action with its consequences."

"My mother obeyed her Sister Superiors where the Lady Jessica disobeyed. Which of them was the stronger? History already has answered."

"May thy knife chip and shatter."

"God created Arrakis to train the faithful."

"The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future."

"Anger is one thing, violence another."

"It's easier to be terrified by an enemy you admire."

"To accept a little death is worse than death itself."

"She focused on the psychokinesthetic extension of herself, looking within, and was confronted immediately with a cellular core, a pit of blackness from which she recoiled. That is the place where we cannot look, she thought. There is the place the Reverend Mothers are so reluctant to mention — the place where only a Kwisatz Haderach may look."

"Things persisted in not being what they seemed."

"You cannot back into the future."

"Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic."

"There is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe. It has symmetry, elegance, and grace - those qualities you find always in that which the true artist captures. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, in the way sand trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of the creosote bush or the pattern of its leaves. We try to copy these patterns in our lives and our society, seeking the rhythms, the dances, the forms that comfort. Yet, it is possible to see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. It is clear that the ultimate pattern contains it own fixity. In such perfection, all things move toward death."

"Everything around him moved smoothly in the ancient routine that required no orders. "Give as few orders as possible," his father had told him…once…long ago. "Once you've given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject." The Fremen knew this rule instinctively."

"Stilgar squared his shoulders, stepped closer to Paul and lowered his voice. "Now, remember what I told you. Do it simply and directly — nothing fancy…You don't have to impress anyone with your courage. We know you are brave. All you must do is call the maker and ride him.""

"When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong – faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thought of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late."

"Control the coinage and the courts — let the rabble have the rest." Thus the Padishah Emperor advises you. And he tells you; "If you want profits, you must rule." There is truth in these words, but I ask myself: "Who are the rabble and who are the ruled?"

"I have said: "Blow out the lamp! Day is here!" And you keep saying: "Give me a lamp so I can find the day.""

"You cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion. This power struggle permeates the training, educating and disciplining of the orthodox community. Because of this pressure, the leaders of such a community inevitably must face that ultimate internal question: to succumb to complete opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing themselves for the sake of the orthodox ethic."

"When law and duty are one, united by religion, you never become fully conscious, fully aware of yourself. You are always a little less than an individual."

"How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him."

"One of the most terrible moments in a boy's life ... is when he discovers his father and mother are human beings who share a love that he can never quite taste. It's a loss, an awakening to the fact that the world is there and here and we are in it alone. The moment carries its own truth; you can't evade it."

"There is in each of us an ancient force that takes and an ancient force that gives. A man finds little difficulty facing that place within himself where the taking force dwells, but it's almost impossible for him to see into the giving force without changing into something other than man. For a woman, the situation is reversed. ... These things are so ancient within us that they're ground into each separate cell of our bodies. We're shaped by such forces. You can say to yourself, 'Yes, I see how such a thing may be.' But when you look inward and confront the raw force of your own life unshielded, you see your peril. You see that this could overwhelm you. The greatest peril to the Giver is the force that takes. The greatest peril to the Taker is the force that gives. It's as easy to be overwhelmed by giving as by taking. (And you, my son, are you one who gives or one who takes? I'm the fulcrum. I cannot give without taking and I cannot take without...)"

"He was warrior and mystic, ogre and saint, the fox and the innocent, chivalrous, ruthless, less than a god, more than a man. There is no measuring Muad'Dib's motives by ordinary standards. In the moment of his triumph, he saw the death prepared for him, yet he accepted the treachery. Can you say he did this out of a sense of justice? Whose justice, then? Remember, we speak now of the Muad'Dib who ordered battle drums made from his enemies' skins, the Muad'Dib who denied the conventions of his ducal past with a wave of the hand, saying merely: "I am the Kwisatz Haderach. That is reason enough.""

"The Guild navigators, gifted with limited prescience, had made the fatal decision: they'd chosen always the clear, safe course that leads ever downward into stagnation."