Some of the most valuable proverbs I have ever found for navigating spirituality in the modern age come from the sayings crafted by Frank Herbert in his Dune series of novels.  This page is dedicated to making these saying readily available on the web.

  • These are illusions of popular history which a successful religion must promote: Evil men never prosper; only the brave deserve the fair; honesty is the best policy; actions speak louder than words; virtue always triumphs; a good deed is its own reward; any bad human can be reformed; religious talismans protect one from demon possession; only females understand the ancient mysteries; the rich are doomed to unhappiness . . .
  • Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class — whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.
  • If you believe certain words, you believe their hidden arguments. When you believe something is right or wrong, true of flase, you believe the assumptions in the words which express the arguments. Such assumptions are often full of holes, but remain most precious to the convinced.
  • Those who would repeat the past must control the teaching of history.
  • Rules build up fortifications behind which small minds create satrapies. A perilous state of affairs in the best of times, disastrous during crises.
  • We tend to become like the worst in those we oppose.
  • Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your life. The object can be stated this way: Live the best life you can. Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck.
  • All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.
  • Religion (emulation of adults by the child) encysts past mythologies: guesses, hidden assumptions of trust in the universe, pronouncements made in search of personal power, all mingled with shreds of enlightenment. And always an unspoken commandment: Thou shalt not question! We break that commandment daily in the harnessing of human imagination to our deepest creativity.
  • Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit. This is the fine point on which all the legal professions of history have based their job security.
  • We do not teach history; we recreate the experience. We follow the chain of consequences — the tracks of the beast in its forest. Look behind our words and you see the broad sweep of social behavior that no historian has ever touched. 
     
  • All states are abstractions.
  • Some never participate. Life happens to them. They get by on little more than dumb persistence and resist with anger or violence. all things that might life them out of resentment-filled illusions of security.
  • Do not depend only on theory if your life is at stake.
  • Major flaws in government arise from a fear of making radical internal changes even though a need is clearly seen.
  • A major concept guides the Missionaria Protectiva: Purposeful instruction of the masses. This is firmly seated in our belief that the aim of argument should be to change the nature of truth. In such matters, we prefer the use of power rather than force.
  • The best art imitates life in a compelling way. If it imitates a dream, it must be a dream of life. Otherwise, there is no place where we can connect. Our plugs don’t fit.
  • Humans are born with a susceptibility to that most persistent and debilitating disease of intellect: self-deception. The best of all possible worlds and the worst get their dramatic coloration from it. As nearly as we can determine, there is no natural immunity. Constant alertness is required.
  • Give me the judgment of balanced minds in preference to laws every time. Codes and manuals create patterned behavior. All patterned behavior tends to go unquestioned, gathering destructive momentum.
  • No sweeteners will cloak some forms of bitterness. If it tastes bitter, spit it out. That’s what our earliest ancestors did.
  • Enter no conflict against fanatics unless you can defuse them. Oppose a religion with another religion only if your proofs (miracles) are irrefutable or if you can mesh in a way that the fanatics accept you as god-inspired. This has long been the barrier to science assuming a mantle of divine revelation. Science is so obviously man-made. Fanatics know where you stand, but more important, must recognize who whispers in your ear.
  • We walk a delicate line, perpetuating Atreides (Siona) genes in our population because that hides us from prescience. We carry the Kwisatz Haderach in that bag! Willfulness created Muad’dib. Prophets make predictions come true! Will we ever again dare ignore our Tao sense and cater to a culture that hates the chance and begs for prophecy?
  • We witness a passing phrase of eternity. Important things happen but some people never notice. Accidents intervene. You are not present at episodes. You depend on reports. And people shutter their minds. What good are reports? History in a news account? Preselected at an editorial conference, digested and excreted by prejudice? Accounts you need seldom come from those who make history. Diaries, memoirs and autobiographies are subjective forms of special pleading. Archives are crammed with such suspect stuff
  • Spend energies on those who make you strong. Energy spent on weaklings drags you to doom. (HM rule) Bene Gesserit Commentary: Who judges?
  • Religion must be accepted as a source of energy. It can be directed for our purposes, but only within limits that experience reveals. He is the secret meaning of Free Will.
  • One household god is this thing we carry forward generation after generation: our message for humankind if it matures. The closest thing we have to a household goddess is a failed Reverend Mother — Chenoeh there in her niche.
  • Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.
  • Making workable choices occurs in a crucible of informative mistakes. Thus Intelligence accepts fallibility. And when absolute (infallible) choices are not known, Intelligence takes chance with limited data in an arena where mistakes are not only possible but also necessary.
  • Do not be quick to reveal judgment. Hidden judgment often is more potent. It can guide reactions whose effects are felt only when too late to divert them.
  • When you think to take determination of your fate into your own hands, that is the moment you can be crushed. Be cautious. Allow for surprises. When we create, there are always other forces at work.
  • There’s no secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves.