Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.

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

Most lives are a flight from selfhood. Most prefer the truths of the stable. You stick your head into the stanchions and munch contentedly until you die. Others use you for their purposes. Not once do you look outside the stable to lift your head and be your own creature.

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.

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

The highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.

When I was writing Dune there was no room in my mind for concerns about the book's success or failure. I was concerned only with the writing. Six years of research had preceded the day I sat down to put the story together, and the interweaving of the many plot layers I had planned required a degree of concentration I had never before experienced.