You've heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There's an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind.

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

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.

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

The future remains uncertain and so it should, for it is the canvas upon which we paint our desires. Thus always the human condition faces a beautifully empty canvas. We possess only this moment in which to dedicate ourselves continuously to the sacred presence which we share and create.

It is so shocking to find out how many people do not believe that they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.

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