Dune Quotes

Who asks for justice? We make our own justice. We make it here on Arrakis— win or die.

Success, that was the danger. It had cost them an empire. If you waved your success around like a banner someone always wanted to cut you down

Spend energies on those who make you strong. Energy spent on weaklings drags you to doom.

Any power must always meet a greater power. Paul Muad'Dib taught this lesson to the Sardaukar on the Plains of Arrakeen.

"I assure you from a God's Olympian perch that government is a shared myth. When the myth dies, the government dies."

Church and State, scientific reason and faith, the individual and his community, even progress and tradition—all of these can be reconciled in the teachings of Muad'Dib.

The writing of history is largely a process of diversion. Most historical accounts distract attention from the secret influences behind great events.

Life cannot find reasons to sustain it, cannot be a source of decent mutual regard, unless each of us resolves to breathe such qualities into it.

Juries are not popular with legalists. Juries oppose the law. They can ignore judges.

Governments may rise and fall for reasons which appear insignificant, Prince. What small events! An argument between two women...which way the wind blows on a certain day...a sneeze, a cough, the length of a garment or the chance collision of a fleck of sand and a courtier's eye

It is said in the desert that possession of water in great amount can inflict a man with fatal carelessness.

To suspect your own mortality is to know the beginning of terror; to learn irrefutably that you are mortal is to know the end of terror.

There is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe. It has symmetry, elegance, and grace

Atrocity is recognized as such by victim and predator 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.

You see, my climate demands a special attitude towards water. You are aware of water at all times. You waste nothing that contains moisture.

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. Make that the science of your tradition!

It is human to have your soul brought to a crisis you did not anticipate.

All contemporaries do not inhabit the same time. The past is always changing, but few realize it.

It's easier to be terrified by an enemy you admire.

Limits of survival are set by climate, those long drifts of change which a generation may fail to notice. And it is the extremes of climate which set the pattern.

I tell you we are a marvel and my memories leave no doubt of this.

To know the future absolutely is to be trapped into that future absolutely. It collapses time. Present becomes future.

You do not take from this universe. It grants you what it will.

I must rule with eye and claw — as the hawk among lesser birds.

I ask myself: 'Who are the rabble and who are the ruled?'

The vision made him want to freeze into immobility, but this, too, was action with its consequences.

A leader [...] maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals, and a people reverts to a mob.

A Fremen dies when he is too long from the desert; this we call 'the water sickness.'

Since every individual is accountable ultimately to the self, formation of that self demands the utmost care and attention.

His eyes were fixed upon the Golden Path and in his left hand he carried the scepter of absolute mastery. And beyond the Golden Path, his eyes looked into eternity which he knew to be the food of his soul and of his everlasting flesh.