More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Too much knowledge never makes for simple decisions.”
“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.”
“Alia resisted. That gave the powers within her their strength.
We don’t resist; we ride with them.
“A large populace held in check by a small but powerful force is quite a common situation in our universe. And we know the major conditions wherein this large populace may turn upon its keepers— “One: When they find a leader. This is the most volatile threat to the powerful; they must retain control of leaders. “Two: When the populace recognizes its chains. Keep the populace blind and unquestioning. “Three: When the populace perceives a hope of escape from bondage. They must never even believe that escape is possible!”
They had suppressed creativity and all sense of progress, of evolution. Prosperity had been dangerous to the old Imperium and its holders of power.
A sense of enclosure should pervade every individual choice—should fence in the family, the community, and every step taken by a proper government.
Change is dangerous! Stilgar told himself. Sameness and stability were the proper goals of government. But the young men and women were beautiful.
Ignorance reduces the shock of some experiences, but they would have no ignorance about birth. What would it be like to live a life where you knew all of the things that could go wrong? You would face a constant war with doubts. You would resent your difference from your fellows.
“To suspect your own mortality is to know the beginning of terror; to learn irrefutably that you are mortal is to know the end of terror.”
Good government never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders.
This is the fallacy of power: ultimately it is effective only in an absolute, a limited universe. But the basic lesson of our relativistic universe is that things change. Any power must always meet a greater power. Paul Muad’Dib taught this lesson to the Sardaukar on the Plains of Arrakeen. His descendants have yet to learn the lesson for themselves.
When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.
One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp too strongly is to be taken over by power, and thus to become its victim.”
could feel himself driven now by the desires of all those whose fortunes rode with him. He found it strange that he could not pin down his own desires in this.
Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class—whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.
“When it’s overexploited, even loyalty wears out finally,”
But one learns from books and reels only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things.”
Is your religion real when it costs you nothing and carries no risk? Is your religion real when you fatten upon it? Is your religion real when you commit atrocities in its name?
I don’t find it strange that all you want to believe is only that which comforts you. How else do humans invent the traps which betray us into mediocrity?
The one-eyed view of our universe says you must not look far afield for problems. Such problems may never arrive. Instead, tend to the wolf within your fences. The packs ranging outside may not even exist.
‘In doing good, avoid notoriety; in doing evil, avoid self-awareness.’”
nothing firm, nothing balanced, nothing durable in all the universe—that nothing remains in its state, that each day, some time each hour, brings change.”
There’s no mystery about a human life. It’s not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”
God discovered us in the Void because we moved against a background which He already knew. The wall was blank.
“My mind controls my reality!”
“It is not the present which influences the future, thou fool, but the future which forms the present.
She makes her own life, thinking she rules many lives. Thus we all play god.”
“To be a god can ultimately become boring and degrading.
There’d be reason enough for the invention of free will! A god might wish to escape into sleep and be alive only in the unconscious projections of his dream-creatures.”
Freedom is a lonely state,
Fear built on fear!
“He mastered the inner world while holding the outer in contempt, and this led to catastrophe. He mastered the outer world while excluding the inner world, and this delivered his descendants to the demons.
“There’s always a prevailing mystique in any civilization,” Leto said. “It builds itself as a barrier against change, and that always leaves future generations unprepared for the universe’s treachery. All mystiques are the same in building these barriers—the religious mystique, the hero-leader mystique, the messiah mystique, the mystique of science/technology, and the mystique of nature itself.
