"There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors."
- Frank Herbert
"The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action."
"Whether a thought is spoken or not it is a real thing and it has power," Tuek said. "You might find the line between life and death among the Fremen to be too sharp and quick."
"Guilt starts as a feeling of failure."
"Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more a..."
"The truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it."
"To be a god can ultimately become boring and degrading. There'd be reason enough for the invention of free will! A god might wish to escape into sleep and be alive only in the unconscious projections ..."
"Irreverence is a most necessary ingredient of religion. Not to speak of its importance in philosophy. Irreverence is the only way left to us for testing our universe."
"Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous."
"My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something cannot emerge from nothing,' he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable..."