Dune (Dune #1)

by Frank Herbert

“A popular man arouses the jealousy of the powerful,”

“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.”

A world is supported by four things….” She held up four big-knuckled fingers. “…the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing….” She closed her fingers into a fist. “…without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!”

“She said a ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel. She said he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men.”

“Then she said a good ruler has to learn his world’s language, that it’s different for every world. And I thought she meant they didn’t speak Galach on Arrakis, but she said that wasn’t it at all. She said she meant the language of the rocks and growing things, the language you don’t hear just with your ears.

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

He recalled another thing the old woman had said about a world being the sum of many things—the people, the dirt, the growing things, the moons, the tides, the suns—the unknown sum called nature, a vague summation without any sense of the now. And he wondered: What is the now?

For the others, we can say that 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. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad’Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.

Please permit the room to convey a lesson we learned from the same teachers: the proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On that path lies danger.

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.

Kynes looked at Jessica, said: “The newcomer to Arrakis frequently underestimates the importance of water here. You are dealing, you see, with the Law of the Minimum.” She heard the testing quality in his voice, said, “Growth is limited by that necessity which is present in the least amount. And, naturally, the least favorable condition controls the growth rate.” “It’s rare to find members of a Great House aware of planetological problems,” Kynes said. “Water is the least favorable condition for life on Arrakis. And remember that growth itself can produce unfavorable conditions unless treated with extreme care.”

“My son displays a general garment and you claim it’s cut to your fit?”

There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.

“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.”

There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.

People are the true strength of a Great House, Paul thought. And he remembered Hawat’s words: “Parting with people is a sadness; a place is only a place.”

Leto, my Leto, she thought. What terrible things we do to those we love!

My father once told me that respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. “Something cannot emerge from nothing,” he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable “the truth” can be.

A plan depends as much upon execution as it does upon concept.”

What do you despise? By this are you truly known.

And the price we paid was the price men have always paid for achieving a paradise in this life—we went soft, we lost our edge.

‘A stone is heavy and the sand is weighty; but a fool’s wrath is heavier than them both.’”

“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.”

“The highest function of ecology is understanding consequences.”

“Life improves the capacity of the environment to sustain life,” his father said. “Life makes needed nutrients more readily available. It binds more energy into the system through the tremendous chemical interplay from organism to organism.”

“To the working planetologist, his most important tool is human beings,” his father said. “You must cultivate ecological literacy among the people.

Science is made up of so many things that appear obvious after they are explained.

“What is important for a leader is that which makes him a leader. It is the needs of his people.

The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.

Let him bring a false accusation against me and have it exposed. I shall stand there, promethean, saying: “Behold me, I am wronged.” Then let him bring any other accusation against me, even a true one. The Great Houses will not believe a second attack from an accuser once proved wrong.

his first collisions with Arrakeen necessities were the true beginnings of his education.

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.

“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.”

“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.”

We know the need for cautious waiting, Jessica thought, but there’s the core of our frustration. We know also the harm that waiting extended too long can do us. We lose our senses of purpose if the waiting’s prolonged.

How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him.

Beside Paul, Gurney Halleck cleared his throat. “Hadn’t we best be getting to a place of safety?” “There is no such place,” Paul said.

“Desperate people are the most dangerous,” Gurney said.

But the test of a man isn’t what you think he’ll do. It’s what he actually does.

They’d never known anything but victory which, Paul realized, could be a weakness in itself.

they’d chosen always the clear, safe course that leads ever downward into stagnation.

Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans in the finite space of a planetary ecosystem 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 improves the closed system’s capacity to sustain life.

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