The Great Dune Trilogy

by Frank Herbert

“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.”

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

“Growth is limited by that necessity which is present in the least amount. And, naturally, the least favorable condition controls the growth rate.”

“Anything outside yourself, this you can see and apply your logic to it,” she said. “But it’s a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, those 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.”

“Parting with people is a sadness; a place is only a place.

“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.

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.

precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it’s too late.”

“A creature who has spent his life creating one particular representation of his selfdom will die rather than become the antithesis of that representation,”

What would it be like to live a life where you knew all of the things that could go wrong? You would face a constant war with doubts.

One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp too strongly is to be taken over by power, and thus to become its victim.”

Time is a measure of space, just as a range-finder is a measure of space, but measuring locks us into the place we measure.

When you study an object from a distance, only its principle may be seen.

Ahhhh, my memories, he thought. I have seen your illusion. You no longer invent the next moment for me. You merely show me how to create new moments. I’ll not lock myself on the old tracks.