Dune Quotes

One of us had to accept the agony, and he was always the stronger.

Hydraulic despotism: central control of an essential energy [...] Obey the central controlling power or the energy is shut off and you die!

Time does not count itself. You have only to look at a circle and this is apparent.

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

Do not be quick to reveal judgment. Hidden judgment often is more potent. It can guide reactions whose effects are felt only when too late to divert them.

Do actions agree with words? There's your measure of reliability. Never confine yourself to the words.

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.

Hope clouds observation.

Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.

Sacred! As with all things sacred, it gives with one hand and takes with the other.

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.

the proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence.

Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind.

Some actions have an end but no beginning; some begin but do not end. It all depends upon where the observer is standing.

The people in the name of Muad'dib! They make love in my name, are born in my name—cross the street in my name. A roof beam cannot be raised in the lowliest hovel of far Gangishree without invoking the blessing of Muad'dib!

Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn

If there is no enemy, one must be invented. The military force which is denied an external target always turns against its own people.

Truth suffers from too much analysis.

[They] had made the fatal decision: they'd chosen always the clear, safe course that leads ever downward into stagnation.

The sins of this universe would trouble anyone.

It occurred to her that mercy was the ability to stop, if only for a moment. There was no mercy where there could be no stopping.

The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree.

We should grant power over our affairs only to those who are reluctant to hold it & then only under conditions that increase the reluctance

How soothing it is to forget. And how dangerous!

Another Festival so soon?' the Lord Leto asked. 'It has been ten years,' the majordomo said. Do you think by this exchange that the Lord Leto betrays an ignorance of time's passage?

Atrocity is recognized as such by victim and predator alike, by all who learn about it at whatever remove.

Major flaws in government arise from a fear of making radical internal changes even though a need is clearly seen.

Is your religion real when it costs you nothing and carries no risk? Is your religion real when you fatten upon it?

Have we forgotten that we were the ones who set this current flowing?

Holders of power wish to suppress wild research. Unrestricted questing after knowledge has a long history of producing unwanted competition

If you need something to worship, then worship life — all life, every last crawling bit of it! We're all in this beauty together!

Ahh, but the dice cannot read their own spots.

Whether a thought is spoken or not it is a real thing and has powers of reality.

There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept?

Four things cannot be hidden — love, smoke, a pillar of fire and a man striding across the open bled.

"He told you that completion equals death!" The Preacher shouted. "Absolute prediction is completion...is death!"

All proofs inevitably lead to propositions which have no proof! All things are known because we want to believe in them.

You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame.

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

Be cautious. Allow for surprises. When we create, there are always other forces at work.

You should never be in the company of anyone with whom you would not want to die.

It is not always the majestic concerns of Imperial ministers which dictate the course of history

What you of the CHOAM directorate seem unable to understand is that you seldom find real loyalties in commerce. When did you last hear of a clerk giving his life for the company? Perhaps your deficiency rests in the false assumption that you can order men to cooperate.

"On Caladan, we ruled with sea and air power," the Duke said. "Here, we must scrabble for desert power. This is your inheritance, Paul."

This wise man observed that wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.

The powerful want a 'safe line of investigations,' which will develop only those products and ideas that can be controlled

Muad'Dib set himself the task of integrating genetic memory into ongoing evaluation. Thus did he break through Time's veils, making a single thing of the future and the past.

Not knowing what you said, you said it.

The person who takes the banal and ordinary and illuminates it in a new way can terrify. We do not want our ideas changed.

A man's flesh is his own; the water belongs to the tribe.