Dune Messiah (Dune, #2)

by Frank Herbert

They’re trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.”

To use raw power is to make yourself infinitely vulnerable to greater powers.

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.

Truth suffers from too much analysis.

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear . . .”

“Stilgar,” Alia said, fighting to hold him, “you stand in a valley between dunes. I stand on the crest. I see where you do not see. And, among other things, I see mountains which conceal the distances.”

Presience has limits

“I told him that to endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe.”

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.

“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.

No matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no matter the developments of life and society nor the complexity of the machine/human interface, there always come interludes of lonely power when the course of humankind, the very future of humankind, depends upon the relatively simple actions of single individuals.

The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: “I feed on your energy.”

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.

Do not compete with what is happening. To compete is to prepare for failure. Do not be trapped by the need to achieve anything. This way, you achieve everything.”