The Great Dune Trilogy

by Frank Herbert

the mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.

It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.

Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. 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.

The struggle between life elements is the struggle for the free energy of a system. Blood’s an efficient energy source.”

“You cannot go on forever stealing what you need without regard to 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 obvious.”

“No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero,”

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.

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.”

“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.”

“The Mother of Chaos was born in a sea,”

Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual.

Consistency isn’t a necessary aspect of the universe.”

“Constitutions become the ultimate tyranny,” Paul said. “They’re organized power on such a scale as to be overwhelming. The constitution is social power mobilized and it has no conscience. It can crush the highest and the lowest, removing all dignity and individuality. It has an unstable balance point and no limitations.

Truth suffers from too much analysis.

You couldn’t say something boundless within the boundaries of any language.

Natural law? What natural law? That myth haunts human history. Haunts! It’s a ghost. It’s insubstantial, unreal.

People want order, this kind or some other. They sit in the prison of their hungers and see that war has become the sport of the rich.

“What’s law? Control? Law filters chaos and what drips through? Serenity? Law—our highest ideal and our basest nature. Don’t look too closely at the law. Do, and you’ll find the rationalized interpretations, the legal casuistry, the precedents of convenience. You’ll find the serenity, which is just another word for death.”

Religious experience needs a spontaneity which laws inevitably suppress.