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

Piter: Ah-ah, Baron! Is it not regrettable you were unable to devise this delicious scheme by yourself?Baron: Someday I will have you strangled, Piter.Piter: Of a certainty, Baron. Enfin! But a kind act is never...

There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.

Give as few orders as possible,” his father had told him once long ago. “Once you’ve given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.

My Uncle Malky always said the Lord Leto never responded to prayer. He said the Lord Leto looked on prayer as attempted coercion, a form of violence against the chosen god, telling the immortal what...

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...

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.

Some say,” Scytale said, “that people cling to Imperial leadership because space is infinite. They feel lonely without a unifying symbol. For a lonely people, the Emperor is a definite place. They can turn toward...

To exist is to stand out, away from the background,” The Preacher said. “You aren’t thinking or really existing unless you’re willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgment of your existence.

It has occurred to me more than once that holy boredom is good and sufficient reason for the invention of free will.

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

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...

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.

One of the key characteristics of an elite corps is its susceptibility to those more powerful than itself. Elite power is naturally attracted to a power hierarchy and fits itself neatly, obediently into the one...

Ce anume disprețuiești? Așa poți fi cunoscut cu adevărat.

And loyalty is a valued commodity. It can be sold . . . not bought, but sold.

The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.

Conducătorul este unul dintre factorii care creează deosebirea dintre o gloată și un popor. Conducătorul trebuie să mențină nivelul indivizilor. Prea puțini indivizi… și un popor degenerează în gloată.

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

Humans are almost always lonely.

Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.

We have a disturbed relationship with our past which religion cannot explain. We are primitive in unexplainable ways, our lives woven of the familiar and the strange, the reasonable and the insane.

The child who refuses to travel in the father’s harness, this is the symbol of man’s most unique capability. “I do not have to be what my father was. I do not have to obey...

Growth is limited by the necessity which is present in the least amount. And naturally, the least favorable condition controls the growth rate

Prisons are needed only to provide the illusion that courts and police are effective. They’re a kind of job insurance.

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...

It was a BuSab axiom that all power blocs tended toward aristocratic forms, that the descendants of decision makers dominated the power niches.

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

If you focus your awareness only upon your own rightness, then you invite the forces of opposition to overwhelm you.

There will be sadness,” Alia intoned. “I remind you that all things are but beginning, forever beginning. Worlds wait to be conquered. Some within the sound of my voice will attain exalted destinies. You will...

One learns from books and example only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things.

A ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel… he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men… a good ruler has to learn his world’s language… it’s different for every...

Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place.

You see, gentlemen, they have something to die for. They’ve discovered they’re a people. They’re awakening.

Another might have missed the tension, but she had trained him in the Bene Gesserit Way – in the minutiae of observation.

The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.

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...

Each of us comes into being knowing who he is and what he is supposed to do.’ … ‘Small children know,’ Leto said. ‘It’s only after adults have confused them that children hide this knowledge...

No matter how much we ask after the truth, self-awareness is often unpleasant. We do not feel kindly toward the Truthsayer.

When I need to identify rebels, I look for men with principles

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.

Politics: the art of appearing candid and completely open while concealing as much as possible.

One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp too strongly is to be taken over by power, and thus to become its victim.

No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero

Proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you have always known.

You must learn to rule. It’s something none of your ancestors learned.

What you of the CHOAM directorate seem unable to understand is that you seldom find real loyalties in commerce … Men must want to do things of their own innermost drives. People, not commercial organisations...

Clinging to any form of conservatism can be dangerous. Become too conservative and you are unprepared for surprises. You cannot depend on luck. Logic is blind and often knows only its own past. Logic is...

There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.

Try looking into that place where you dare not look! You’ll find me there, staring out at you!