Great Throughts Treasury

"This wise man observed that wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery."

"Those who would repeat the past must control the teaching of history."

"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."

"Time became a sequence of layers."

"Time can also be a place.... Everything depends on where you are standing, on where you look or what you hear. The measure of it is found in consciousness itself."

"Time is a measure of space, just as a range-finder is a measure of space, but measuring locks us into the place we measure."

"To attempt an understanding of Maud'Dib without understanding his mortal enemies, the Harkonnens, is to attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing Darkness. It cannot be."

"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."

"To come under siege ... was the inevitable fate of power."

"To endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe. You cannot hire a wise man or any other intellect to solve it for you. There's no writ of inquest or calling of witness to provide answers. No servant or disciple can dress the wound. You dress it yourself or continue bleeding for all to see."

"To create change you find leverage points and move them. Beware blind alleys. Offers of high positions are a common distraction paraded before marchers. Leverage points are not all in high office. They are often at economic or communications centers and unless you know this, high office is useless."

"To exist is to stand out, away from the background. You aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgment of your existence."

"To know a thing we'll, know it's limits; Only when pushed beyond its tolerance will it's true nature be seen. - The Amtal Rule"

"To know the future absolutely is to be trapped into that future absolutely. It collapses time. Present becomes future. I require more freedom than that."

"To ones not yet dead."

"To see eternity was to be exposed to eternity's whims, oppressed by endless dimensions."

"To the east, the night grew a faggot of luminous grey, then seashell opalescence that dimmed the stars. There came the long, bell-tolling movement of dawn striking across a broken horizon."

"To the Lady Jessica: May this place give you as much pleasure as it has given me. 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. My kindest wishes, Margot Lady Fenring"

"Too much knowledge never makes for simple decisions."

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

"Try looking into that place where you dare not look! You'll find me there, staring out at you!"

"Try to hold on to youth and it mocks you while it sprints away."

"Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know."

"Unceasing warfare gives rise to its own social conditions which have been similar in all epochs. People enter a permanent state of alertness to ward off attacks. You see the absolute rule of the autocrat. All new things become dangerous frontier districts--new planets, new economic areas to exploit, new ideas or new devices, visitors--everything suspect."

"Trying to find rules for creation is like trying to separate mind from body."

"Understanding requires words. Some things cannot be reduced to words. There are things that can only be experienced wordlessly... The act of saying that things exist that cannot be described in words shakes a universe where words are supreme."

"Use the first moments in study. You may miss many an opportunity for quick victory this way, but the moments of study are insurance of success. Take your time and be sure."

"Usul, you're crying. Usul, my strength, do you give moisture to the dead? To whose dead?"

"War is the most readily available form of chaos."

"Unused power was like a marionette with visible strings, nobody holding them. A compelling attraction: I could make it dance."

"War is behavior with roots in the single cell of the primeval seas. Eat whatever you touch or it will eat you."

"We are the people of Misr, the old woman rasped. Since our Sunni ancestors fled from Nilotic al-Ourouba, we have known flight and death. The young go on that our people shall not die."

"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."

"We fear anything we do not control."

"We had something few experience. We were joined in our strengths rather than in our weaknesses."

"We accept too damned many things on the explanations of people who could have good reasons for lying."

"We are questioning more than the philosophy behind our dependence upon limited and limiting systems. We question the power structures that have grown up around such systems."

"War… the ultimate predator… the cohesive force which shatters."

"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."

"We have eternity, beloved. You may have eternity. I have only now. But this is eternity."

"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!"

"We never completely escape the teachers of our childhood nor any of the patterns that formed us."

"We never get far from wealth and all of its masks when we deal with power."

"We pay for the violence of our ancestors."

"We say of Muad'dib that he has gone on a journey into that land where we walk without footprints."

"We can still remember the golden days before Heisenberg, who showed humans the walls enclosing our predestined arguments. The lives within me find this amusing. Knowledge, you see, has no uses without purpose, but purpose is what builds enclosing walls."

"We faced it and did not resist. The storm passed through us and around us. It's gone, but we remain."

"We should not be afraid. Fear destroys reason. The fear is that ignoble death that brings total destruction. I will stand face to face with my fear. I will allow him to pass over me and through me. And when you go away, you turned your inner eye to follow his path. Where I fear is gone, there is nothing left. Only I will remain"

"We say, Well, the only answer is.... or, If you would just... Whatever follows these two statements narrows the choices right there. It gets the vision right down close to the ground so that you don't see anything happening outside. Humans tend not to see over a long range. Now we are required, in these generations, to have a longer range view of what we inflict on the world around us. This is where, I think, science fiction is helping. I don't think that the mere writing of such a book as Brave New World or 1984 prevents those things which are portrayed in those books from happening. But I do think they alert us to that possibility and make that possibility less likely. They make us aware that we may be going in that direction."

"We should grant power over our affairs only to those who are reluctant to hold it and then only under conditions that increase the reluctance."