The Best Dune Quotes - Learning From Literature

Dune by Frank Herbert is widely hailed as one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written, earning both the Hugo and Nebula Awards — science fiction’s highest honors.

The original Dune series is filled with many memorable quotes.

Here are some of the best:

Part One of The Best Dune Quotes

“Use the first moments in study. You may miss many an opportunity for quick victory this way, but the moments of study are insurance of success. Take your time and be sure.”

“For what do you hunger, Lord?” “For a humankind which can make truly long-term decisions. Do you know the key to that ability, Moneo?” “You have said it many times, Lord. It is the ability to change your mind.”

“If you must label the absolute, use its proper name: Temporary.”

“Just as individuals are born, mature, breed, and die, so do societies and civilizations and governments.”

“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.”

“You’ve heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There’s an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove the threat to his kind.”

“There was a man who sat each day looking out through a narrow vertical opening where a single board had been removed from a tall wooden fence. Each day a wild ass of the desert passed outside the fence and across the narrow opening—first the nose, then the head, the forelegs, the long brown back, the hindlegs, and lastly the tail. One day, the man leaped to his feet with the light of discovery in his eyes and he shouted for all who could hear him: “It is obvious! The nose causes the tail!”

“Anything outside yourself, this you can see and apply your logic to it. But it’s a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, these 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.”

“Do not be trapped by the need to achieve anything. This way, you achieve everything.”

“The highest function of ecology is understanding consequences.”

“Man is but a pebble dropped in a pool.”

“If you need something to worship, then worship life – all life, every last crawling bit of it! We’re all in this beauty together!”

“A great man doesn’t seek to lead. He is called to it.”

“A ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel.”

“Power tends to isolate those who hold too much of it. Eventually, they lose touch with reality… and fall.”

“Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.”

“Anger is one thing, violence another.”

“The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him”

“Privilege becomes arrogance. Arrogance promotes injustice. The seeds of ruin blossom.”

“Do actions agree with words? There’s your measure of reliability. Never confine yourself to the words.”

“The mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”

“A person needs new experiences. They jar something deep inside, allowing him to grow. Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens.”

“Show me a completely smooth operation and I’ll show you someone who’s covering mistakes. Real boats rock.”

“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.”

“The wise man molds himself – the fool lives only to die.”

“When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong – faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it’s too late.”

“Never follow a leader without asking your own questions.”

“How easy it was to mistake clear reasoning for correct reasoning.”

“Reason is the first victim of strong emotion.”

“Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.”

“The proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On that path lies danger.”

“We tend to become like the worst in those we oppose.”

“The price we paid was the price men have always paid for achieving a paradise in this life – we went soft, we lost our edge.”

“If all those around you believe some particular thing, you will soon be tempted to share in that belief.”

“When strangers meet, great allowances should be made for differences of custom and training.”

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

Part Two of The Best Dune Quotes

“The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows – a wall against the wind. This is the willow’s purpose.”

“Ways change.”

“But all of a man’s water, ultimately, belongs to his people – to his tribe… A dead man, surely, no longer requires that water.”

“The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door.”

“The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training.”

“The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.”

“The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.”

“The surest way to keep a secret is to make someone think they already know the answer.”

“A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.”

“To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.”

“To know a thing well, know its limits; Only when pushed beyond its tolerance will its true nature be seen.”

“If you rely only on your eyes, your other senses weaken.”

“What do you despise? By this are you truly known.”

“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.”

“Desperate people are the most dangerous.”

“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.”

“There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man – with human flesh.”

“How often it is that the angry man rages in denial of what his inner self is telling him.”

“Most believe that a satisfactory future requires a return to an idealized past, a past which never in fact existed.”

“It’s shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.”

“It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.”

“This wise man observed that wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.”

“Whether a thought is spoken or not, it is a real thing and it has power.”

“Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your life… Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck.”

“The universe is full of doors.”

“Arrakis could be an Eden if its rulers would look up from grubbing for spice!”

“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 and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class.”

“Most civilisation is based on cowardice… You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame.”

“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.”

“Major flaws in government arise from a fear of making radical internal changes even though a need is clearly seen.”

“Hope clouds observation.”

“Dangers lurk in all systems. Systems incorporate the unexamined beliefs of their creators. Adopt a system, accept its beliefs, and you help strengthen the resistance to change.”

“That honorable banner could come to mean many evil things.”

“Most deadly errors arise from obsolete assumptions.”

“Some lies are easier to believe than the truth.”

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