Dune (Dune #1)

by Frank Herbert

“The spice,” he said. “It’s in everything here—the air, the soil, the food, the geriatric spice. It’s like the Truthsayer drug. It’s a poison!”

“A poison—so subtle, so insidious…so irreversible. It won’t even kill you unless you stop taking it. We can’t leave Arrakis unless we take part of Arrakis with us.”

respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality.

he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning “That path leads ever down into stagnation.”

“Men and their works have been a disease on the surface of their planets before now,” his father said. “Nature tends to compensate for diseases, to remove or encapsulate them, to incorporate them into the system in her own way.”

A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people. He maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals, and a people reverts to a mob.”

“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.”