Great Throughts Treasury

"For now is my grief heavier than the sands of the seas, she thought. This world has emptied me of all but the oldest purpose: tomorrow's life."

"For a few moments longer, Teg watched the drinks being distributed by the skilled waiting staff: dark local beers and some expensive imports. Scattered along the bar and on the softly illuminated tables were bowls containing crisp-fried local vegetables, heavily salted. Such an obvious move to heighten thirst apparently offended no one. It was merely expected in this trade. The beers would be heavily salted, too, of course. They always were. Brewers knew how to kick off the thirst response."

"Full moon calls thee-- Shai-hulud shall thou see; Red the night, dusky sky, bloody death didst thou die. We pray to a moon: she is round-- Luck with us will then abound, what we seek for shall be found in the land of solid ground."

"For what do you hunger, Lord? Moneo ventured. For a humankind which can make truly long-term decisions. Do you know the key to that ability, Moneo? You have said it many times, Lord. It is the ability to change your mind."

"For the in-between universe where we find our daily lives, that which you believe is a dominant force. Your beliefs order the unfolding of daily events. If enough of us believe, a new thing can be made to exist. Belief structure creates a filter through which chaos is shifted into order."

"For the Gowachin, to stand alone against all adversity is the most sacred moment of existence."

"Give as few orders as possible, his father had told him once long ago. Once you've given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject."

"Governments do not know what they cannot do until after they cease to be governments. Each government carries the seeds of its own destruction."

"Governments can be useful to the governed only so long as inherent tendencies toward tyranny are restrained."

"Four things cannot be hidden -- love, smoke, a pillar of fire and a man striding across the open bled."

"Give me the judgment of balanced minds in preference to laws every time. Codes and manuals create patterned behavior. All patterned behavior tends to go unquestioned, gathering destructive momentum."

"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."

"Has not religion claimed a patent on creation for all of these millennia?"

"He did what any good guerrilla leader would. He separated us into two parties and arranged that he couldn't reveal where we are if he's captured. He won't really know."

"He fell face forward, dead before he touched the floor."

"He felt that there were too many people in this room, that the air he breathed had passed through too many lungs."

"He felt unable to stop the inflow of data or the cold precision with which each new item was added to his knowledge and the computation was centered in his awareness."

"He has learned that it is difficult to live in the present, pointless to live in the future, and impossible to live in the past."

"Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him."

"Grow up is becoming more wicked."

"Growth is limited by the necessity which is present in the least amount. And naturally, the least favorable condition controls the growth rate"

"Grave this on your memory, lad: A world is supported by four things... she held up four big-knuckled fingers... 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 things are as nothing... She closed her fingers into a fist... without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!"

"He 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. Muad'dib knew that every experience carries a lesson."

"He offered no complaint but summoned up a vision."

"He passed off the loss of a spice crawler with a gesture. The threat to men’s lives had him in a rage. A leader such as that would command fanatic loyalty. He would be difficult to defeat."

"He stood atop a dune and scanned all around: emptiness, emptiness, emptiness."

"He told you that completion equals death! The Preacher shouted. Absolute prediction is completion… is death!"

"He was not naive, he merely permitted himself no distractions."

"He who can destroy a thing has the real control of it."

"He who can destroy a thing, can control a thing."

"He who controls the spice controls the universe."

"Here lies a toppled god. His fall was not a small one. We did but build his pedestal, a narrow and a tall one. - Tleilaxu Epigram"

"Hey, that turned out not to be such a good idea. I'd better not do that anymore."

"Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new."

"His mother had undergone this test. There must be a terrible purpose in it... the pain and fear had been terrible. He understood terrible purposes. They drove against all odds. They were their own necessity. Paul felt that he had been infected with terrible purpose. He did not know yet what the terrible purpose was."

"His voice was low, charged with unspeakable adjectives."

"Historians exercise great power and some of them know it. They recreate the past, changing it to fit their own interpretations. Thus, they change the future as well."

"History is a constant race between invention and catastrophe. Education helps but it’s never enough. You also must run."

"How easy it is to follow our thoughts instead of our senses."

"How could a just God permit great misery? The Haitian peasants answered with a proverb: 'Bondye konn bay, men li pa konn separe,' in literal translation, 'God gives but doesn't share.' This meant... God gives us humans everything we need to flourish, but he's not the one who's supposed to divvy up the loot. That charge was laid upon us."

"Humans are almost always lonely."

"Humans are born with a susceptibility to that most persistent and debilitating disease of intellect: self-deception. The best of all possible worlds and the worst get their dramatic coloration from it. As nearly as we can determine, there is no natural immunity. Constant alertness is required."

"Humans live best when each has his place to stand, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things and what he may achieve. Destroy the place and you destroy the person."

"I am a leg of the death tripod that will destroy our foes."

"I am I because I am here."

"Hydraulic despotism: central control of an essential energy such as water, electricity, fuel, medicines, mélange… Obey the central controlling power or the energy is shut off and you die!"

"I am like a person whose hands were kept numb, without sensation from the first moment of awareness - until one day the ability to feel is forced into them. And I say Look! I have no hands! But the people all around me say: What are hands?"

"I am a collection of the obsolete, a relic of the damned, of the lost and strayed. I am the waylaid pieces of history which sank out of sight in all of our pasts. Such an accumulation of riffraff has never before been imagined."

"I am not the river; I am the net."

"I assure you that the ability to view our futures can become a bore. Even to be thought of as a god, as I certainly was, can become ultimately boring. It has occurred to me more than once that holy boredom is good and sufficient reason for the invention of free will."