Dune

Highlights

• “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 will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
• “Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
• Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man’s mind,’” Paul quoted.
• said the mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.
• A man of surpassing warmth and surprising coldness was the Duke Leto Atreides.
• “What delicious abandon in the sleep of a child.”
• Great Mother! he thought. I’ve aroused her suspicions! Now I must use every trick my Wanna taught me. There’s only one solution: tell the truth as far as I can.
• Command must always look confident, he thought. All that faith riding on your shoulders while you sit in the critical seat and never show it.
• There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man—with human flesh.
• it’s a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, those things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. We tend to flounder around, blaming everything but the actual, deep-seated thing that’s really chewing on us.”
• “If you rely only on your eyes, your other senses weaken.”
• “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 me I will turn to see fear’s path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
• What do you despise? By this are you truly known.
• That girl! She was like a touch of destiny. He felt caught up on a wave, in tune with a motion that lifted all his spirits.
• A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people. He maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals, and a people reverts to a mob.”
• Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.
• “When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong—faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thought of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it’s too late.”
• When law and duty are one, united by religion, you never become fully conscious, fully aware of yourself. You are always a little less than an individual.