01 November 2020
Dune
Frank Herbert

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.”
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“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 a threat to his kind.”
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“Hope clouds observation.”
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Shield your son too much, Jessica, and he’ll not grow strong enough to fulfill any destiny.”
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‘That which submits rules.’”
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A world is supported by four things….” She held up four big-knuckled fingers. “…the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing….” She closed her fingers into a fist. “…without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!”
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‘A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.’
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“What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises—no matter the mood! Mood’s a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It’s not for fighting.”
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What was it St. Augustine said? she asked herself. “The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.” Yes—I am meeting more resistance lately. I could use a quiet retreat by myself.
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It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.
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[T]he proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On that path lies danger.
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You never really exhaust the possibilities of an entire planet.”
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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 that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.
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Seeing all the chattering faces, Paul was suddenly repelled by them. They were cheap masks locked on festering thoughts—voices gabbling to drown out the loud silence in every breast.
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“Most educated people know that the worst potential competition for any young organism can come from its own kind.” He deliberately forked a bite of food from his companion’s plate, ate it. “They are eating from the same bowl. They have the same basic requirements.”
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“When strangers meet, great allowance should be made for differences of custom and training.”
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Is it defeatist or treacherous for a doctor to diagnose a disease correctly? My only intention is to cure the disease.”
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[I]t’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.”
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Why do I let pride drive such words out of me?
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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.
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The mind goes on working no matter how we try to hold it back.
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“The absence of a thing,” the Baron said, “this can be as deadly as the presence. The absence of air, eh? The absence of water? The absence of anything else we’re addicted to.”
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And 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.
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‘A stone is heavy and the sand is weighty; but a fool’s wrath is heavier than them both.’”
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“The mind can go either direction under stress—toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at the positive end.
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“We make our own judgments on value,” Stilgar said. “Every man has the right to his own judgments,” she said.
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“Beginnings are such delicate times.”
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The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called “spannungsbogen”—which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.
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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.”
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“When your opponent fears you, then’s the moment when you give the fear its own rein, give it the time to work on him. Let it become terror. The terrified man fights himself. Eventually, he attacks in desperation. That is the most dangerous moment, but the terrified man can be trusted usually to make a fatal mistake. You are being trained here to detect these mistakes and use them.”
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The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.
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“It’s easier to be terrified by an enemy you admire.”
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The man without emotions is the one to fear. But deep emotions…ah, now, those can be bent to your needs.”
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[I]t’s well known that repression makes a religion flourish.
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“My father had an instinct for his friends,” Paul said. “He gave his love sparingly, but with never an error. His weakness lay in misunderstanding hatred.
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“One of the most terrible moments in a boy’s life,” Paul said, “is when he discovers his father and mother are human beings who share a love that he can never quite taste. It’s a loss, an awakening to the fact that the world is there and here and we are in it alone. The moment carries its own truth; you can’t evade it.
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“Orchards and vineyards, And full-breasted houris, And a cup overflowing before me. Why do I babble of battles, And mountains reduced to dust? Why do I feel these tears? Heavens stand open And scatter their riches; My hands need but gather their wealth. Why do I think of an ambush, And poison in molten cup? Why do I feel my years? Love’s arms beckon With their naked delights, And Eden’s promise of ecstasies. Why do I remember the scars, Dream of old transgressions… And why do I sleep with fears?”
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You see, gentlemen, they have something to die for. They’ve discovered they’re a people. They’re awakening.”
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They’d never known anything but victory which, Paul realized, could be a weakness in itself.
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“The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it.
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“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.”