Dune

"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?"

"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."

"It occurred to Paul then that he had seen his own dead body along countless reaches of the time web, but never once had he seen his moment of death."

"The eye that looks ahead to the safe course is closed forever."

"In that instant, Paul saw how Stilgar had been transformed from the Fremen naib to a creature of the Lisan al-Gaib, a receptacle for awe and obedience. It was a lessening of the man, and Paul felt the ghost-wind of the jihad in it."

"The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it."

"Try looking into that place where you dare not look! You'll find me there, staring out at you!"

"Expect only what happens in the fight. That way you'll never be surprised."

"Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive."

"Life — all life — is in the service of life"

"The thing the ecologically illiterate don't realize about an ecosystem is that it's a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche. A system has order, a flowing from point to point. If something dams the flow, order collapses. The untrained might miss that collapse until it was too late. That's why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences."

"Riots and comedy are but symptoms of the times, profoundly revealing. They betray the psychological tone, the deep uncertainties... And the striving for something better, plus the fear that nothing would come of it all."

"Men, finding no answers to the sunnah [the ten thousand religious questions from the Shari-ah] now apply their own reasoning. All men seek to be enlightened. Religion is but the most ancient and honorable way in which men have striven to make sense out of God's universe. Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is the task of Religion to fit man into this lawfulness."

"Much that was called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility toward life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eye of God, that knowledge without action is empty. All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you've always known."

"It was a time of sorceresses whose powers were real. The measure of them is seen in the fact they never boasted how they grasped the firebrand."

"“We shouldn’t have tried to create new symbols,” he said. We should've realized we weren't supposed to introduce uncertainties into accepted belief, that we weren't supposed to stir up curiosity about God. We are daily confronted by the terrifying instability of all things human, yet we permit our religions to grow more rigid and controlled, more conforming and oppressive. What is this shadow across the highway of Divine Command? It is a warning that institutions endure, that symbols endure when their meaning is lost, that there is no summa of all attainable knowledge."

"Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, "I am not the kind of person I want to be." It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied."

"When law and religious duty are one, your selfdom encloses the Universe."

"Power tends to isolate those who hold too much of it. Eventually, they lose touch with reality... and fall."