Great Throughts Treasury

"A person needs new experiences. They jar something deep inside, allowing you to grow. Without them, it sleeps- seldom to awaken. The sleeper must awaken."

"A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it."

"A ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel."

"A stone is heavy and the sand is weighty; but a fool's wrath is heavier than them both."

"A world is supported by four things: the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing, without a ruler who knows the art of ruling."

"A sophisticated human can become primitive. What this really means is that the human's way of life changes. Old values change, become linked to the landscape with its plants and animals. This new existence requires a working knowledge of those multiplex and cross-linked events usually referred to as Nature. It requires a measure of respect for the inertial power within such natural systems. When a human gains this knowledge and respect that is called being primitive. The converse, of course, is equally true: the primitive human can become sophisticated, but not without incurring dreadful psychological damage."

"A slave is one who must produce wealth for another, the Brain said. There is only one true wealth in all the universe. I have given you some of it. I have given your father and your mate some of it. And your friends. This wealth is living time. Time. Are we slaves because we have given you more time to live?"

"A requirement of creativity is that it contributes to change. Creativity keeps the creator alive."

"Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible."

"Abandon certainty! That's life's deepest command. That's what life's all about. We're a probe into the unknown, into the uncertain. Why can't you hear Muad'Dib? If certainty is knowing absolutely an absolute future, then that's only death disguised! Such a future becomes now!"

"A voice hissed: He sheds tears!"

"After all, wealth doesn’t necessarily have to be spent on any particular thing. It’s just… potentially useful."

"Agreement bought with threats is no agreement."

"Ah, Hah! But you see, Baron, I know as a Mentat when you will send the executioner. You will hold back just so long as I am useful. To move sooner would be wasteful and I'm yet of much use. I know what it is you learned from that lovely Dune planet - waste not? True, Baron?"

"Ah! Indeed but! But he consumes too much spice, eats it like candy. Look at his eyes! He might have come directly from the Arrakeen labor pool. Efficient, Piter, but he's still emotional and prone to passionate outbursts. Efficient, Piter, but he still can err."

"All of history is a malleable instrument in my hands. Ohhh, I have accumulated all of these pasts and I possess every fact—yet the facts are mine to use as I will and, even using them truthfully, I change them."

"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."

"All proofs inevitably lead to propositions which have no proof! All things are known because we want to believe in them."

"And burnt out both his eyes!"

"And made himself a saint."

"And those who pray for dew on the deserts edge; shall bring forth the deluge."

"Always recognize the accuracy of folk wisdom."

"All sentient beings are created unequal. The nest society provides each with equal opportunity to float at his own level."

"All the wisdom of the universe cannot match the alert willingness to dodge a violent blow."

"And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning 'That path leads ever down into stagnation."

"Ambitions tend to remain undisturbed by realities."

"Any man who retreats into a cave which has only one opening deserves to die."

"Any power must always meet a greater power."

"Anything less than abject submission has to have some attack in it."

"Anything outside yourself, this you can see and apply your logic to it. But it’s a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, these things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. We tend to flounder around, blaming everything but the actual, deep-seated thing that’s really chewing on us."

"Are you already training my replacement? Piter demanded. Replace you? Why, Piter, where could I find another Mentat with your cunning and venom? The same place you found me, Baron. Perhaps I should at that, the Baron mused. You do seem a bit unstable lately. And the spice you eat! Are my pleasures too expensive, Baron? Do you object to them? My dear Piter, your pleasures are what tie you to me. How could I object to that?"

"Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife chopping off what's incomplete and saying: Now, it's complete because it's ended here."

"Answers are a perilous grip on the universe. They can appear sensible yet explain nothing."

"Any attempt to display the universe of impermanence arouses rejection patterns, fear, anger, and despair."

"Atrocity is recognized as such by victim and perpetrator alike, by all who learn about it at whatever remove. Atrocity has no excuses, no mitigating argument. Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. It is self-perpetuating upon itself - a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred."

"Because of the one-pointed Time awareness in which the conventional mind remains immersed, humans tend to think of everything in a sequential, word-oriented framework. This mental trap produces very short-term concepts of effectiveness and consequences, a condition of constant, unplanned response to crises."

"Behold, as a wild ass in the desert, go I forth to my work."

"Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous."

"Ask what Infinity might produce and the only answer possible was, Anything. Any good, any evil; any god, any devil."

"As to you of CHOAM, what nonsense you believe! Men must want to do things out of their own innermost drives. People, not commercial organizations or chains of command, are what makes great civilizations work. Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness--they cannot work and their civilization collapses."

"Beware! The mind of the believer stagnates. It fails to grow outward into an unlimited, infinite universe."

"Beware of the truth, gentle Sister. Although much sought after, truth can be dangerous to the seeker. Myths and reassuring lies are much easier to find and believe. If you find a truth, even a temporary one, it can demand that you make painful changes. Conceal your truths within words. Natural ambiguity will protect you then."

"Briefly, the scientists working the Oregon coast found that sand could be controlled only by the use of one type of grass (European beach grass) and by a system of follow-up plantings with other growth. The grass sets up a beachhead by holding down the sand in an intricate lacing of roots. This permits certain other plants to gain a foothold. The beach grass is extremely difficult to grow in nursuries, and part of the solution to the dune problem involved working out a system for propagating and handling the grass."

"Bless the Maker and His water. Bless the coming and going of Him. May His passage cleanse the world. May He keep the world for His people."

"But attack can take strange forms. And you will remember the tooth. The tooth. Duke Leto Atreides. You will remember the tooth."

"Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept?"

"But it's well known that repression makes a religion flourish."

"But let us not rail about justice as long as we have arms and the freedom to use them."

"But Paul had been warned by Chani: Jamis fights with either hand. And the depth of his training had taken in that trick en passant. Keep the mind on the knife and not on the hand that holds it, Gurney Halleck had told him time and again. The knife is more dangerous than the hand and the knife can be in either hand."

"But one learns from books and reels only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things."