How ignorant a man can become on a diet of managed history.
He realized suddenly that it was one thing to see the past occupying the present, but the true test of prescience was to see the past in the future. Things persisted in not being what they seemed.
The terrain enforced its own rhythms.
It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.
The wise despot...maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.
I stood upon the sand of the sea and saw a beast rise up out of the sea…and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.
Constitutions become the ultimate tyranny, Paul said. They’re organized power on such a scale as to be overwhelming. The constitution is social power mobilized and it has no conscience. It can crush t...
Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.
God created Arrakis to train the faithful.
My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality.
You can’t stop a mental epidemic. It leaps from person to person across parsecs. It’s overwhelmingly contagious. It strikes at the unprotected side, in the place where we lodge the fragments of other...
There will be sadness," Alia intoned. "I remind you that all things are but beginning, forever beginning. Worlds wait to be conquered. Some within the sound of my voice will attain exalted destinies....
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 wi...
They are not mad. They're trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.
A single obscure decision of prophecy, perhaps the choice of one word over another, could change the entire aspect of the future. He tells us The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it,...
The abyss remains. It is pregnant with all the things yet to be. Ah, what gentle violence!
Monarchies have some good features beyond their star qualities. They can reduce the size and parasitic nature of the management bureaucracy. They can make speedy decisions when necessary. They fit an...
What do you despise? By this are you truly known. —
Gods need take no responsibility for anything except genesis. Gods accept everything and thus accept nothing. Gods must be identifiable yet remain anonymous. Gods do not need a spirit world.
Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual. -Words of Muad'dib by Princess Irulan...
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