This is the awe-inspiring universe of magic: There are no atoms, only waves and motions all around. Here, you discard all belief in barriers to understanding. You put aside understanding itself. This universe cannot be seen, cannot be heard, cannot be detected in any way by fixed perceptions. It is the ultimate void where no preordained screens occur upon which forms may be projected. You have only one awareness here—the screen of the magi: Imagination! Here, you learn what it is to be human. You are a creator of order, of beautiful shapes and systems, an organizer of chaos.

Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your own life.

Humans live best when each has his place, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things. Destroy the place and destroy the person.

Those who would repeat the past must control the teaching of history.

Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces.

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 -- whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.

The singular multiplicity of this universe draws my deepest attention. It is a thing of ultimate beauty. Leto II