Great Throughts Treasury

"One of the most terrible words in any language is Soldier. The synonyms parade through our history: yogahnee, trooper, hussar, kareebo, cossack, deranzeef, legionnaire, sardaukar, fish speaker... I know them all. They stand there in the ranks of my memory to remind me: Always make sure you have the army with you."

"One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp too strongly is to be taken over by power, and thus to become its victim."

"Only fools prefer the past!"

"Only gods can safely risk perfection ... it's a dangerous thing for a man."

"Our civilization appears to’ve fallen so deeply into the habit of invasion that we cannot even obey a simple order of the Imperium without the old ways cropping up."

"Paired opposites define your longings and those longings imprison you."

"Paradise on my right, Hell on my left and the Angel of Death behind."

"Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place."

"People don't know anything about themselves because they're all worried about everybody else."

"People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles."

"Philosophy is always dangerous because it promotes the creation of new ideas."

"Piter spoke to Jessica. I'd thought of binding you by a threat held over your son, but I begin to see that would not have worked. I let emotion cloud reason. Bad policy for a Mentat."

"People don't vote. Instinct tells them it's useless."

"Order generally was a product of human activity. Chaos existed as a raw material from which to create order."

"Overwhelming force destroys people who pose too great a threat."

"Police are inevitably corrupted. ... Police always observe that criminals prosper. It takes a pretty dull policeman to miss the fact that the position of authority is the most prosperous criminal position available."

"Perhaps your deficiency rests in the false assumption that you can order men to think and cooperate. This has been a failure of everything from religions to general staffs throughout history ... Men must want to do things out of their own innermost drives ... Every civilization depends on the quality of the individuals it produces."

"Politics: the art of appearing candid and completely open while concealing as much as possible."

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

"Power tends to isolate those who hold too much of it. Eventually, they lose touch with reality... and fall."

"Prisons are needed only to provide the illusion that courts and police are effective. They're a kind of job insurance."

"Privilege becomes arrogance. Arrogance promotes injustice. The seeds of ruin blossom."

"Proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you have always known."

"Producing perfection from imperfection is, after all, the highest of art forms."

"Prophecy and prescience--How can they be put to the test in the face of unanswered questions? Consider: How much is actual prediction ... and how much is the prophet shaping the future to fit the prophecy? What are the harmonics inherent in the act of prophecy? Does the prophet see the future or does he see a line of weakness, a fault or cleavage that he may shatter with words or decisions as a diamond-cutter shatters his gem with a blow of the knife?"

"Providence and Manifest Destiny are synonyms often invoked to support arguments based on wishful thinking."

"Prophets have a way of dying by violence."

"Prophets hold a key to the lock in a language. The mechanical image remains only an image to them. This is not a mechanical universe. The linear progression of events is imposed by the observer. Cause and effect? That's not it at all. The prophet utters fateful words. You glimpse a thing destined to occur. But the prophetic instant releases something of infinite portent and power. The universe undergoes a ghostly shift. Thus, the wise prophet conceals actuality behind shimmering labels. The uninitiated then believe the prophetic language is ambiguous. The listener distrusts the prophetic messenger. Instinct tells you how the utterance blunts the power of such words. The best prophets lead you up to the curtain and let you peer through for yourself."

"Question: Who governs the governors? Answer: Entropy."

"Questions are my enemies. For my questions explode!"

"Quite naturally, holders of power wish to suppress wild research. Unrestricted questing after knowledge has a long history of producing unwanted competition. The powerful want a safe line of investigations, which will develop only those products and ideas that can be controlled and, most important, that will allow the larger part of the benefits to be captured by inside investors. Unfortunately, a random universe full of relative variables does not insure such a safe line of investigations."

"Ready comprehension is often a knee-jerk response and the most dangerous form of understanding. It blinks an opaque screen over your ability to learn. Be warned. Understand nothing. All comprehension is temporary."

"Reevaluation taught me caution. I approached the problem with trepidation. Certainly, by the loosest of our standards there were plenty of visible targets, a plethora of blind fanaticism and guilty opportunism at which to aim painful barbs. But how did we get this way? What makes a Nixon? What part do the meek play in creating the powerful? If a leader cannot admit mistakes, these mistakes will be hidden. Who says our leaders must be perfect? Where do they learn this?"

"Reason is the first victim of strong emotion."

"Radicals are only to be feared when you try to suppress them. You must demonstrate that you will use the best of what they offer."

"Religion is but the most ancient and honorable way in which men have striven to make sense out of God's universe."

"Religion, too, is a weapon. What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government?"

"Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, 'I am not the kind of person I want to be.' It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied. [Last words of Toure Bomoko]"

"Religious institutions perpetuate a moral master-servant relationship. They create an arena which attracts prideful human power-seekers with all of their nearsighted prejudices!"

"Riots and comedy are but symptoms of the times, profoundly revealing. They betray the psychological tone, the deep uncertainties....and the striving for something better, plus the fear that nothing would come of it all."

"Revenge is for children and the emotionally retarded."

"Right from the first, the little people who formed the governments which promised to equalize the social burdens found themselves suddenly in the hands of bureaucratic aristocracies. Of course, all bureaucracies follow this pattern, but what a hypocrisy to find this even under a communized banner. Ahhh, well, if patterns teach me anything it’s that patterns are repeated."

"Science fiction, because it ventures into no man's lands, tends to meet some of the requirements posed by Jung in his explorations of archetypes, myth structures and self-understanding. It may be that the primary attraction of science fiction is that it helps us understand what it means to be human."

"Remember: Bureaucracy elevates conformity ... Make that elevates 'fatal stupidity' to the status of religion."

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

"Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is the task of Religion to fit man into this lawfulness."

"She asked me to tell her what it is to rule, Paul said. And I said that one commands. And she said I had some unlearning to do. She hit a mark there right enough, Hawat thought. He nodded for Paul to continue. She said a ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel. She said he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men."

"Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection or compassionate action."

"She looked at patches of blackness. Black is a blind remembering, she thought."

"Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock."