All men beneath your position covet your position.
-
Frank Herbert Dune
The price we paid was the price men have always paid for achieving paradise
in this life--we went soft, we lost our edge.
-
Frank Herbert Dune
A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with
the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.
-
Frank Herbert Dune
Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain you cannot see the mountain.
-
Frank Herbert Dune
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.
-
Frank Herbert Dune
Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is true of humans in the infinite space of a planetary ecosystem as it is of gas molecules sealed in a flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.
-
Frank Herbert Dune
Control the coinage and the courts -- let the rabble have the rest. If you want profits, you must rule. There is truth in those words, but I ask myself who are the rabble and who are the ruled?
-
Frank Herbert Dune
How easy it is to kill the uprooted plant, especially when you put it down in hostile soil.
-Frank Herbert Dune
Humans live best when each has his own place, when each knows where he
belongs in the scheme of things. Destroy the place and destroy the person.
-Frank Herbert Dune
If you rely only on your eyes, your other senses weaken.
-Frank Herbert Dune
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.
-
Frank Herbert Dune Messiah
The writing of history is largely a process of diversion. Most
historical accounts distract attention from the secret influences behind every
great event.
-
Frank Herbert Chapterhouse: Dune
We should grant power over affairs only to those who are reluctant to
hold it and then only under conditions that increase the reluctance.
--
Frank Herbert Chapterhouse: Dune
All governments needed to remain under suspicion during their time of power.
Trust no government! Not even mine!
-
Frank Herbert Chapterhouse: Dune
We tend to become like the worst in those we oppose.
-
Frank Herbert Chapterhouse: Dune
Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect all who seek it.
-
Frank Herbert Chapterhouse: Dune
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.
- Frank Herbert Chapterhouse: Dune