Dune Messiah (Dune, #2)

by Frank Herbert

Priests. As with all priests, you learned early to call the truth heresy.

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.

“You can’t stop a mental epidemic. It leaps from person to person across parsecs. It’s overwhelmingly contagious. It strikes at the unprotected side, in the place where we lodge the fragments of other such plagues. Who can stop such a thing? Muad’Dib hasn’t the antidote. The thing has roots in chaos. Can orders reach there?”

The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other.

There exists a limit to the force even the most powerful may apply without destroying themselves. Judging this limit is the true artistry of government. Misuse of power is the fatal sin. The law cannot be a tool of vengeance, never a hostage, nor a fortification against the martyrs it has created. You cannot threaten any individual and escape the consequences.