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“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.”
‘Polish comes from the cities; wisdom from the desert.’”
“The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.”
“Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it’s a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.”
the proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On that path lies danger.
“My lungs taste the air of Time Blown past falling sands….”
“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.”
“Whether a thought is spoken or not it is a real thing and has powers of reality.”
A man’s flesh is his own and his water belongs to the tribe—and the mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve but a reality to experience.
“When religion and politics ride the same cart, when that cart is driven by a living holy man (baraka), nothing can stand in their path.”
“Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.”
There exists no separation between gods and men; one blends softly casual into the other.
“They’re not mad. They’re trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.”
“One who rules assumes irrevocable responsibility for the ruled.
To use raw power is to make yourself infinitely vulnerable to greater powers.
“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. I, however, have limitations. In my desire to provide an ultimate protection for my people, I forbid a constitution.
Truth suffers from too much analysis.
“If prescience alone existed and did everything, Sire, it would annihilate itself. Nothing but prescience? Where could it be applied except to its own degenerating movements?”
It is said one can always tell an aristocrat: he reveals only those of his vices which will make him popular.”
“Power tends to isolate those who hold too much of it. Eventually, they lose touch with reality . . . and fall.”
“What religion and self-interest cannot hide, governments can,”
“And rulers are notoriously cynical where religions are concerned. Religion, too, is a weapon. What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government?”
“Some say,” Scytale said, “that people cling to Imperial leadership because space is infinite. They feel lonely without a unifying symbol. For a lonely people, the Emperor is a definite place. They can turn toward him and say: ‘See, there He is. He makes us one.’ Perhaps religion serves the same purpose, m’Lord.”
“You were conditioned to an overweening thirst for power. You were imbued with a shrewd grasp of politics and a deep understanding for the uses of war and ritual. Natural law? What natural law? That myth haunts human history. Haunts! It’s a ghost. It’s insubstantial, unreal. Is your Jihad a natural law?”
“The wise man molds himself—the fool lives only to die.”
“Men cannot separate means and enlightenment,”
“He laughed. And he said, ‘People don’t want a bookkeeper for an Emperor; they want a master, someone who’ll protect them from change.’ But he agreed that destruction of his Empire arises from himself.”
“I told him that to endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe.”
“The greatest palatinate earl and the lowliest stipendiary serf share the same problem. You cannot hire a mentat or any other intellect to solve it for you. There’s no writ of inquest or calling of witnesses to provide answers. No servant—or disciple—can dress the wound. You dress it yourself or continue bleeding for all to see.”
“Isn’t that stability? 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. That’s a dangerous form of sophistication. It’s disorderly.”
“I’ve seen the oracle at work,” the ghola said. “I’ve seen those who seek signs and omens for their individual destiny. They fear what they seek.”
“Men always fear things which move by themselves,” the ghola said. “You fear your own powers. Things fall into your head from nowhere. When they fall out, where do they go?”
The flesh surrenders itself, he thought. Eternity takes back its own. Our bodies stirred these waters briefly, danced with a certain intoxication before the love of life and self, dealt with a few strange ideas, then submitted to the instruments of Time. What can we say of this? I occurred. I am not . . . yet, I occurred.
When a creature has developed into one thing, he will choose death rather than change into his opposite.
One did not demean the highest aspirations of humankind. No machine could function in the way of a human mind. No word or deed could imply that men might be bred on the level of animals.
The Reverend Mother understood now the subtle depths of Paul’s offer. He would make the Bene Gesserit party to an act which would bring down popular wrath . . . were it ever discovered. They could not admit such paternity if the Emperor denied it. This coin might save the Atreides genes for the Sisterhood, but it would never buy a throne.
“An offer is only as good as the real thing it buys,” he said. “The exchange offered here is life-for-life, a high order of business.”
But power deluded those who used it. One tended to believe power could overcome any barrier . . . including one’s own ignorance.
“It is not just a religion!”
“Religious government is something else. Muad’Dib has crowded his Qizarate in everywhere, displaced the old functions of government. But he has no permanent civil service, no interlocking embassies. He has bishoprics, islands of authority. At the center of each island is a man. Men learn how to gain and hold personal power. Men are jealous.”
They’d become a civilization of dry-eyed watchers and taletellers, people who solved all problems with power . . . and more power . . . and still more power—hating every erg of it.
“You can’t build politics on love,” he said. “People aren’t concerned with love; it’s too disordered. They prefer despotism. Too much freedom breeds chaos. We can’t have that, can we? And how do you make despotism lovable?”
“Government cannot be religious and self-assertive at the same time. Religious experience needs a spontaneity which laws inevitably suppress. And you cannot govern without laws. Your laws eventually must replace morality, replace conscience, replace even the religion by which you think to govern. Sacred ritual must spring from praise and holy yearnings which hammer out a significant morality. Government, on the other hand, is a cultural organism particularly attractive to doubts, questions and contentions. I see the day coming when ceremony must take the place of faith and symbolism replaces
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Before he could mask it, mystical terror lay briefly on Korba’s face. It was there for anyone to read: With her powers, Alia had but to accuse him herself, saying she brought the evidence from the shadow region, the alam al-mythal.
Anything can be a tool—poverty, war. War is useful because it is effective in so many areas. It stimulates the metabolism. It enforces government. It diffuses genetic strains. It possesses a vitality such as nothing else in the universe. Only those who recognize the value of war and exercise it have any degree of self-determination.”
There was a man so wise, He jumped into A sandy place And burnt out both his eyes! And when he knew his eyes were gone, He offered no complaint. He summoned up a vision And made himself a saint.
“There are problems in this universe for which there are no answers,” Paul said. “Nothing. Nothing can be done.”
“Deep enough. I can see how we clutter the universe with our migrations.
People are subordinate to government, but the ruled influence the rulers.
