When you imagine mistakes, there can be no self-defense.

You can't build politics on love. People aren't concerned with love; it's too disordered. They prefer despotism. Too much freedom breeds chaos.

Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.

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.

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.

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.

When strangers meet, great allowance should be made for differences of custom and training.