“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.”
—Litany against Fear
“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the
balances
are correct.”
—from “Manual of Muad’Dib”
“Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere.
Climb
the mountains just a little bit to test that it’s a mountain.
From the
top of the mountain, you can not see the mountain”
—Bene Gesserit proverb
“There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the
one
in which you discover your father is a man—with human flesh.”
—from “Collected Sayings of Muad’Dib”
“Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never
consistent.
It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind.
The
person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is
in.
He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a
strong
sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in
his
own pretensions. The sardonic is all the permits him to move
within
himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will
destroy
a man.”
—from ”Collected Sayings of Muad’Dib”
“There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.”
—from “Collected Sayings of Muad’Dib”
“Do you wrestle with dreams?
Do you contend with shadows?
Do you move in a kind of sleep?
Time has slipped away.
Your life is stolen.
You tarried with trifles,
Victim of your folly.”
—from “Songs of Muad’Dib”
“There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times
and
oppression to develop psychic muscles.”
—from “Collected Sayings of Muad’Dib”
“Something can not emerge from nothing. This is profound thinking
if
you understand how unstable ‘the truth’ can be.”
—from “conversations with Muad’Dib”
“What do you despise? By this you are truly known.”
—from “Manual of Muad’Dib”
“God created Arrakis to train the faithful.”
—from “The Wisdom of Muad’Dib”
“The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us
from
the terrors of the future.”
—from “Collected Sayings of Muad’Dib”
“The hands move, the lips move–
Ideas gush from his words,
And his eyes devour!
He is an island of Selfdom”
—description from “A Manual of Muad’Dib”
“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical
universe
that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step behind
logic.”
—from “The Sayings of Muad’Dib”
“There is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe.
It has
symmetry, elegance, and grace—those qualities you find in the turning
of
the seasons, in the way sand trails along a ridge, in the branch
clusters
of the creosote bush of the pattern of its leaves. We try to copy
these
patterns in out lives and out society, seeking the rhythms, the dances,
the
forms that comfort. Yet, it is possible to see peril in the
finding
of ultimate perfection. It is clear that the ultimate pattern
contains
its own fixity. In such perfection, all things move toward death.”
—from “Collected Sayings of Muad’Dib”
“You can not avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox
religion.
This power struggle permeates the training, educating and disciplining
of
the orthodox community. Because of this pressure, the leaders of
such
a community inevitably must face that ultimate internal question: to
succumb
to complete opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk
sacrificing
themselves for the sake of the orthodox ethic.”
—from “Muad’Dib: The Religious Issues”
“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”
—from “Muad’Dib” The 99 Wonders of the
Universe”
“How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self
is
telling him.”
—from “Collected Sayings of Muad’Dib”
“And that day dawned when Arrakis lay at the hub of the universe with
the
wheel poised to spin”
—from “Arrakis Awakening”
“Never count a man dead until you have seen his corpse. And even
then
you may be wrong”
—Bene Gesserit saying
