Caution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding, passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve.

When religion and politics ride in the same cart, the whirlwind follows.

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.

He who can destroy a thing, can control a thing.

Knowing where the trap is-- that's the first step in evading it.

Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is the task of Religion to fit man into this lawfulness.

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.