Such a rich store of myths enfolds Paul Muad'dib, the Mentat Emperor, and his sister, Alia, it is difficult to see the real persons behind these veils. But there were, after all, a man born Paul Atreides and a woman born Alia. Their flesh was subject to space and time. And even though their oracular powers placed them beyond the usual limits of time and space, they came from human stock. They experienced real events which left real traces upon a real universe. To understand them, it must be seen that their catastrophe was the catastrophe of all mankind. This work is dedicated, then, not to Muad'dib or his sister, but to their heirs--to all of us.
--Dedication in the Muad'dib Concordance as copied from The Tabla Memorium of the Mahdi Spirit Cult

There exists no separation between gods and men; one blends softly casual into the other.
--Proverbs of Muad'dib

Every civilization must contend with an unconscious force which can block, betray or countermand almost any conscious intention of the collectivity.
--Tleilaxu Theorem (unproven)

The advent of the Field Process shield and the lasgun with their explosive interaction, deadly to attacker and attacked, placed the current determinatives on weapons technology. We need not go into the special role of atomics. The fact that any Family in my Empire could so deploy its atomics as to destroy the planetary bases of fifty or more other Families causes some nervousness, true. But all of us possess precautionary plans for devastating retaliation. Guild and Landsraad contain the keys which hold this force in check, No, my concern goes to the development of humans as special weapons. Here is a virtually unlimited field which a few powers are developing.
--Muad'dib: Lecture to the War College from The Stilgar Chronicles

Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual.
--Words of Muad'dib by Princes Irulan

"Once more the drama begins."
--The Emperor Paul Muad'dib on his ascension to the Lion Throne

Truth suffers from too much analysis.
--Ancient Fremen Saying

The Fremen see her as the Earth Figure, a demi-goddess whose special charge is to protect the tribes through her powers of violence. She is Reverend Mother to their Reverend Mothers. To pilgrims who seek her out with demands that she restore virility or make the barren fruitful, she is a form of antimentat. She feeds on that proof that the "analytic" has limits. She represents ultimate tension. She is the virgin-harlot--witty, vulgar, cruel, as destructive in her whims as a coriolus storm.
--St. Alia of the Knife as taken from the Irulan Report

The most dangerous game in the universe is to govern from an oracular base. We do not consider ourselves wise enough or brave enough to play that game. The measures detailed here for regulation in lesser matters are as near as we dare venture to the brink of government. For our purposes, we borrow a definition from the Bene Gesserit and we consider the various worlds as gene pools, sources of teachings and teachers, sources of the possible. Our goal is not to rule, but to tap these gene pools, to learn, and to free ourselves from all restraints imposed by dependency and government.
--"The Orgy as a Tool of Statecraft," Chapter Three of the Steersman's Guild

Here lies a toppled god--
His fall was not a small one.
We did but build his pedestal,
A narrow and tall one.
--Tleilaxu Epigram

I think what a joy it is to be alive, and I wonder if I'll ever leap inward to the root of this flesh and know myself as I once was. The root is there. Whether any act of mine can find it, that remains tangled in the future. But all things a man can do are mine. Any act of mine may do it.
--The Ghola Speaks Alia's Commentary

"You do not beg the sun for mercy."
--Muad'Dib's Travail from The Stilgar Commentary

"I've had a bellyful of the god and priest business! You think I don't see my own mythos? Consult your data once more, Hayt. I've insinuated my rites into the most elementary human acts. The people eat in the name of Muad'dib! They make love in my name, are born in my name--cross the street in my name. A roof beam cannot be raised in the lowliest hovel of far Gangishree without invoking the blessing of Muad'dib!"
--Book of Diatribes from The Hayt Chronicle

Oh, worm of many teeth,
Canst thou deny what has no cure?
The flesh and breath which lure thee
To the ground of all beginnings
Feed on monsters twisting in a door of fire!
Thou hast no robe in all thy attire
To cover intoxications of divinity
Or hide the burnings of desire!
--Wormsong from the Dunebook

The audacious nature of Muad'dib's actions may be seen in the fact that He knew from the beginning whither He was bound, yet not once did He step aside from that path. He put it clearly when He said: "I tell you that I come now to my time of testing when it will be shown that I am the Ultimate Servant." Thus He weaves all into One, that both friend and foe may worship Him. It is for this reason and this reason only that His Apostles prayed: "Lord, save us from the other paths which Muad'dib covered with the Waters of His Life." Those "other paths" may be imagined only with the deepest revulsion.
--from The Yiam-el-Din

No matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no matter the developments of life and society nor the complexity of the machine/human interface, there always come interludes of lonely power when the course of humankind, depends upon the relatively simple actions of single individuals.
--from The Tleilaxu Godbuk

Production growth and income growth must not get out of step in my Empire. That is the substance of my command. There are to be no balance-of-payment difficulties between the different spheres of influence. And the reason for this is simply because I command it. I want to emphasize my authority in this area. I am the only supreme energy-eater of this domain, and will remain so, alive or dead. My government is the economy.
--Order in Council The Emperor Paul Muad'dib

The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: "I feed on your energy."
--Addenda to Orders in Council The Emperor Paul Muad'dib

He has gone from Alia,
The womb of heaven!
Holy, holy, holy!
Fire-sand leagues
Confront our Lord.
He can see
Without eyes!
A demon upon him!
Holy, holy, holy
Equation:
He solved for
Martyrdom!
--The Moon Falls Down Songs of Muad'dib

Tibana was an apologist for Socratic Christianity, probably a native of IV Anbus who lived between the eight and ninth centuries before Corrino, likely in the second reign of Dalamak. Of his writings, only a portion survives from which this fragment is taken: "The hearts of all men dwell in the same wilderness."
--from The Dunebuk of Irulan

The sequential nature of actual events is not illuminated with lengthy precision by the powers of prescience except under the most extraordinary circumstances. The oracle grasps incidents cut out of the historic chain. Eternity moves. It inflicts itself upon the oracle and the supplicant alike. Let Muad'dib's subjects doubt his majesty and his oracular visions. Let them deny his powers. Let them never doubt Eternity.
--The Dune Gospels

There exists a limit to the force even the most powerful may apply without destroying themselves. Judging this limit is the true artistry of government. Misuse of power is the fatal sin. The law cannot be a tool of vengeance, never a hostage, nor a fortification against the martyrs it has created. You cannot threaten any individual and escape the consequences.
--Muad'Dib on Law The Stilgar Commentary

There was a man so wise,
He jumped into
A sandy place
And burnt out both his eyes!
And when he knew his eyes were gone,
He offered no complaint
he summoned up a vision
And made himself a saint.
--Children's Verse from History of Muad'dib

We say of Muad'dib that he has gone on a journey into that land where we walk without footprints.
--Preamble to the Qizarate Creed

EPILOGUE
No bitter stench of funeral-still for Muad'dib.
No knell nor solemn rite to free the mind
From avaricious shadows.
He is the fool saint,
The golden stranger living forever
On the edge of reason.
Let your guard fall and he is there!
His crimson peace and sovereign pallor
Strike into our universe on prophetic webs
To the verge of a quiet glance--there!
Out of bristling star-jungles:
mysterious, lethal, an oracle without eyes,
Catspaw of prophecy, whose voice never dies!
Shai-hulud, he awaits thee upon a strand
Where couples walk and fix, eye to eye,
The delicious ennui of love.
He strides through the long cavern of time,
Scattering the fool-self of his dream.
--The Ghola's Hymn

 

Additional Quotes

A: Why should I answer your questions?
Q; Because I will preserve your words.
A: Ahhh! The ultimate appeal to a historian!
-From the death cell interview with Bronso of IX

As with all things sacred, it gives with one hand and takes with the other.
-From the death cell interview with Bronso of IX

As with all priests, you learned early to call the truth heresy.
-From the death cell interview with Bronso of IX

Cynicism! That, no doubt is a greater crime than heresy.
-From the death cell interview with Bronso of IX

Reason is the first victim of emotion. -Scytale Every question can be boiled down to the one: 'Why is there anything?' Every religious, business and governmental question has the single derivative: 'Who will exercise power?' Alliances, combines, complexes, they all chase mirages unless they go for power. All else is nonsense, as most thinking beings come to realize.
-Edric

Listening carefully to the teacher, one acquires an education.
-Scytale

A creature who has spent his life creating one particular representation of his selfdom will die rather than become the antithesis of that representation.
-Scytale

Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.
-Scytale

The thing was written with salt.
-Freman saying

You have damp hands!
-Freman curse

One who rules assumes irrevocable responsibility for the ruled. You are a husbandman. This demands, at time, a selfless act of love which may only be amusing to those you rule.
-The Old Duke

I've loosed the wolf among the sheep.
-Paul Atreides

When godhead's given, that's the one thing the so-called god no longer controls.
-Paul Atreides

I never wanted to be a god. I wanted only to disappear like a jewel of trace dew caught by the morning. I wanted to escape the angels and the damned – alone . . . as though by an oversight.
-Paul Atreides

I wanted only to look back and say: "There! There's an existence which couldn't hold me. See! I vanish! No restraint or net of human devising can trap me ever again. I renounce my religion! This glorious instant is mine! I'm free!"
-Paul Atreides

To use raw power is to make yourself infinitely vulnerable to greater powers.
-Bene Gesserit axiom

A wind has blown the land away
And blown the sky away
And all the men!
Who is this wind?
The trees stand unbent,
Drinking where men drank.
I've known too many worlds,
Too many men,
Too many trees,
Too many winds.
-Song of the Jilhad

An object seen form a distance betrays only it's principle.
That which is dark and evil may be seen for evil at any distance.
-Scytale and Farok

What is more ridiculous than a Death Commando transformed into a priest?
-Paul Atreides

There are limits to power, as those who put their hopes in a constitution always discover . . . Constitutions become the ultimate tyranny. They're organized power on such a scale as to be overwhelming. The constitution is social power mobilized and it has no conscience. It can crush the highest and the lowest, removing all dignity and individuality. It has an unstable balance point and no limitations. I, however, have limitations. In my desire to provide an ultimate protection for my people, I forbid a constitution.
-Paul Atreides

The cleansed mind makes decisions in the presence of unknowns and without cause and effect.
- Hayt

Strong decisions. These temper a man's life. One can take the temper from fine metal by heating it and allowing it to cool without quenching.
-Hayt

The facts needed by a mentat do not brush off onto one as you might gather pollen on your robe while passing through a field of flowers. One chooses his pollen carefully, examines it under powerful amplification.
-Hayt

Ideas are most to be feared when they become actions.
-Paul Atreides

There was an inexorable quality to this realization-a movement like the movement of planets. It carried something of the order of the universe in it, inevitable and terrifying.
-Dune Messiah You stand in a valley between dunes. I stand on the crest. I see where you do not see. And, among other things, I see mountains which conceal the distances. And danger may come from behind the mountains. But whatever comes from behind the mountains must cross the dunes.
-Alia and Stilgar on prescience

If prescience existed alone and did everything, Sire, it would annihilate itself.
-Edric

People always expect the worst of the rich and powerful, Sire. It is said one can always tell an aristocrat: he reveals only those of his vices which will make him popular.
-Edric

Power tends to isolate those who hold too much of it. Eventually, they lose touch with reality . . . and fall.
-Edric

I prefer the cynical view. You obviously are trained in all the lying tricks of statecraft, the double meanings and the power words. Language is nothing more than a weapon to you and, thus, you test my armor.
-Paul

The cynical view. And rulers are notoriously cynical where religions are concerned. Religion, too, is a weapon. What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government?
-Edric

Some say that people cling to Imperial leadership because space is infinite. They feel lonely without a unifying symbol. For a lonely people, the Emperor is a definite place. They can turn toward him and say: 'See, there He is. He makes one.' Perhaps religion serves the same purpose, m'Lord.
-Scytale

You couldn't say something boundless within the boundaries of any language.
-Paul Atreides

The wise man molds himself-the fool lives only to die.
-Zensunni saying

Men cannot separate means and enlightenment.
-Hayt

People don't want a bookkeeper for an Emperor; they want a master, someone who'll protect them from change.
-Paul Atreides

To endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe.
-Hayt

The greatest palatinate earl and the lowest stipendiary surf share the same problem. You cannot hire a mentat or any other intellect to solve it for you. There's no writ of inquest or calling of witnesses to provide answers. No servant-or disciple-can dress the wound. You dress it yourself or continue bleeding for all to see.
-Hayt

Keeping one's friends and destroying one's enemies. Isn't that stability? People want order, this kind or some other. They sit in the prison of their hungers and see that war has become the sport of the rich. That's a dangerous form of sophistication. It's disorderly.
-Hayt

You do not take from this universe. It grants what it will.
-Paul Atreides

Her hips are dunes curved by the wind,
Her eyes shine like summer heat.
Two braids of hair hang down her back-
Rich with water rings, her hair!
My hands remember her skin,
Fragrant as amber, flower-scented.
Eyelids tremble with memories . . .
I am stricken by love's white flame!
-Song of the Jihad

Trying to live in this future, do you give substance to such a future? Do you make it real?
-Hayt

Where is there substance in a universe composed of events? Is there a final answer? Doesn't each solution produce new questions?
-Paul Atreides

You've not brought your mind to rest at its beginning.
-Hayt

"Is that how you destroy me? Prevent me from collecting my thoughts?"
"Can you collect chaos? We Zensunni say: 'Not collecting, that is the ultimate gathering.' What can you gather without gathering yourself?"
-Paul and Hayt

Not collecting, that is the ultimate gathering.
-Zensunni saying

I've seen those who seeks signs and omens for their individual destiny. They fear what they seek.
-Hayt

Men always fear things that move by themselves.
-Hayt

You fear your own powers. Things fall into your head from nowhere. When they fall out, where do they go?
-Hayt

You comfort me with thorns.
-Paul Atreides

The flesh surrenders itself. Eternity takes back its own. Our bodies stirred these water briefly, danced with a certain intoxication before the love of life and self, dealt with a few strange ideas, then submitted to the instruments of Time. What can we say of this? I occurred. I am not . . . yet, I occurred.
-Paul Atreides

One moment of incompetence can be fatal.
-Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam

When a creature had developed into one thing, he will shoose death rather than change into his opposite. -Scytale's assessment Often, I must speak otherwise than I think. That is called diplomacy.
-Stilgar

An offer is only as good as the real thing it buys.
-Hayt

The pitfall of Bene Gesserit training lay in the powers granted; such powers predisposed one to vanity and pride. But power deluded those who used it. One tended to believe power could overcome any barrier . . . including one's own ignorance.
-Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam

There are many degrees of sight and many degrees of blindness.
-Paul Atreides

What senses do we lack that we cannot see another world around us?
-The O.C. Bible

We must not grieve for those dear to us before their passing.
Tell me, little sister, what is before?
-Alia and Paul

If the substance of the here and now is changed, the future is changed.
-Hayt

Because we cannot imagine a thing, that doesn't exclude it from reality.
-Hayt

The innocent do not believe in evil.
-Scytale as Lichna

She rides the sandworm of space!
She guides through all storms
Into the land of gentle winds.
Though we sleep by the snake's den,
She guards our dreaming souls.
Shunning the desert heat,
She hides us in a cool hollow.
The gleaming of her white teeth
Guides us in the night.
By the braids of her hair
We are lifted up to heaven!
Sweet fragrance, flower-scented,
Surrounds us in her presence.
She comes from the east,
The sun stands at her back.
All things are exposed. In the full glare of light-
Her eyes miss no thing,
Neither light nor dark.
Shai-hulud writes on clean sand!
Alia . . . Alia . . . Alia . . .
She stills all storms-
Her eyes kill our enemies,
And torment the unbelievers.
From the spires of Tuono
Where dawnlight strikes
And clear water runs,
You see her shadow.
In the shining summer heat
She serves us bread and milk-
Cool, fragrant with spices.
Her eyes melt our enemies, torment our oppressors
And pierce all mysteries
She is Alia . . . Alia . . . Alia . . .Alia . . .
-Chorus of the Priestess of Alia

Growing older is to grow more wicked.
-Paul Atreides

How could one man, one ritual, hope to knit such immensity into a garment fitted to all men?
-Paul Atreides

A: In the beginning we were empty
C: Ignorant of all things
A: We did not know the Power that abides in every place
C: And every time
A: Here is the Power
C: It brings us joy
A: It awakens the soul
C: It dispels all doubts
A: In worlds, we perish
C: In the Power, we survive.
-Alia and the Priestess Chorus

Luminous night. Nothing hides in such a night! What rare light is this darkness? You cannot fix your gaze upon it! Senses cannot record it. No words describe it. The abyss remains. It is pregnant with all the things yet to be. Ahhhhh, what gentle violence! There will be sadness. I remind you that all things are but a beginning, forever beginning. Worlds wait to be conquered. Some within the sound of my voice will attain exalted destinies. You will sneer at the past, forgetting what I tell you now: within all differences there is unity.
-Alia

You try to walk backward in sand. Nothing is lost. Everything returns later, but you may not recognize the changed form that returns. You live in the air but you do not see it.
-Alia

Beginning and end are a single thing.
-Alia

I know when we should leave. It's a talent few men have. There's a time for endings-and that's a good beginning.
-Bijaz

Bygones, bygones. Let bygones fall where they may. This has been a dirty day.
-Bijaz

I was baptized in sand and it cost me the knack of believing. Who trades in faiths anymore? Who'll buy? Who'll sell?
-Paul Atreides

Forget mystery and accept love. There's no mystery about love. It comes from life.
-Paul Atreides

You can't build politics on love. People aren't concerned with love; it's disordered. They prefer despotism. Too mush freedom breeds chaos. We can't have that, can we? And how do you make despotism loveable?
-Paul Atreides

What's law? Control? Law filters chaos and what drips through? Law-our highest ideal and our basest nature. Don't look too closely at the law. Do, and you'll find the rationalized interpretations, the legal casuistry, the precedents of convenience. You'll find the serenity, which is just another word for death.
-Paul Atreides

Never to forget-never to forgive.
-Fremen Maxim

The present blotted out the past.
-Alia

Government cannot be a religious and self-assertive at the same time. Religious experience needs a spontaneity which laws inevitably suppress, And you cannot govern without laws. Your laws eventually must replace morality, replace conscience, replace even the religion by which you think you govern. Scared ritual must spring from praise and holy yearnings which hammer out a significant morality. Government, on the other hand, is a cultural organism particularly attractive to doubts, questions and contentions. I see the day coming when ceremony must take the place of faith and symbolism replaces morality.
-Lady Jessica

I have said: 'Blow out the lamp! Day is here!' And you keep saying: 'Give me a lamp so I can find the day.'
-Bijaz

There is nothing firm, nothing balanced, nothing durible in all the universe-nothing remains in its state, each day, sometimes each hour brings change.
-Bene Gesserit saying.

Anything can be a tool-poverity, war. War is usful because it is effective in so many areas. It stimulates the metbabolism. It enforces government. It diffuses genetic strains. It possesses a vitality such as nothing else in the universe. Only those who recognize the value of war and exercise it have any degree of self-determination.
-Bijaz

You hide your real purpose! You throw up a screen of words and they mean nothing!
-Hayt

Possession of second sight has a tendency to make one a dangerous fatalist.
-Alia

Only gods can safety risk perfection. It's a dangerous thing for a man.
-Alia

When you stumble you may regain your balance by jumping beyond the thing that tripped you.
-Hayt

Nature abhors prescience.
-Alia

Words are such gross machinery, so primitive and ambiguous.
-Alia

We have forgotten that the word 'company' originally meant traveling companions.
-Paul Atreides

We've lost that clear, single-note of living. If it cannot be bottled, beaten, pointed or hoarded, we give it no value.
-Paul Atreides

I think I've tried to invent life, not realizing it'd already been invented.
-Paul Atreides

Do not be trapped by the need to achieve anything. This way, you achieve everything.
-Zensunni saying

If you need something to worship, then worship life-all life, every last crawling bit of it! We're all in this beauty together!
-Paul Atreides

A man must be half mad to imagine he could rule even a teardrop of that volume.
-Paul while looking a the stars through his eyeless vision

We will not run. We'll move with dignity. We'll do what must be done.
-Paul Atreides

There are problems in this universe for which there are no answers.
-Paul Atreides

People are subordinate to government, but the ruled influence the rulers.
-Atreides training manual