Dune Chronicles 03. Children of Dune

It is not the present which influences the future, thou fool, but the future which forms the present. You have it all backward. Since the future is set, an unfolding of events which will assure that future is fixed and inevitable.

There’s no mystery about a human life. It’s not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced

In doing good, avoid notoriety; in doing evil, avoid self-awareness.

All proofs inevitably lead to propositions which have no proof! All things are known because we want to believe in them.

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.”

past may show the right way to behave if you live in the past, Stil, but circumstances change.

‘Your Jihad will be a summer picnic on Caladan by comparison,’ Leto agreed.

at you of the CHOAM directorate seem unable to understand is that you seldom find real loyalties in commerce. When did you last hear of a clerk giving his life for the company? 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. General staffs have a long record of destroying their own nations. As to religions, I recommend a rereading of Thomas Aquinas. As to you of CHOAM, what nonsense you believe! Men must want to do things out of their own innermost drives. People, not commercial organizations or chains of command, are what make great civilizations work. Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness – they cannot work and their civilization collapses.
– A letter to CHOAM
Attributed to The Preacher

When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.
– Words of an ancient philosopher

(Attributed by Harq al-Ada to One Louis Veuillot)

Paul Atreides is no more. He tried to stand as a supreme moral symbol while he renounced all moral pretensions. He became a saint without a god, every word a blasphemy. How can you think—”