# God Emperor of Dune - Author: [Frank Herbert](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert.md) - Quotes: 53 - Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune ## Quotes > The defiling of a god is an ancient human tradition. Why should I be an exception? [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/the-defiling-of-a-god.md) > Odd as it may seem, great struggles such as the one you can see emerging from my journals are not always visible to the participants. Much depends on what people dream in the secrecy of their hearts. I have always been as concerned with the shaping of dreams as with the shaping of actions. Between the lines of my journals is the struggle with humankind's view of itself — a sweaty contest on a field where motives from our darkest past can well up out of an unconscious reservoir and become events with which we not only must live but contend. It is the hydra-headed monster which always attacks from your blind side. I pray, therefore, that when you have traversed my portion of the Golden Path you no longer will be innocent children dancing to music you cannot hear. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/odd-as-it-may.md) > It is difficult to live in the present, pointless to live in the future and impossible to live in the past. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/it-is-difficult.md) > It was the Fremen custom to treat distant people as hostile until they threw sand into the air. Thrown sand is a profound gesture. It says: `We share the same burden. Sand is our only enemy. This is what we drink. The hand [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/it-was-the.md) > I have created what I intended-a powerful spiritual tension throughout my Empire. Few sense the strength of it. With what energies did I create this condition? I am not that strong. The only power I possess is the control of individual prosperity. That is the sum of all the things I do. Then why do people seek my presence for other reasons? What could lead them to certain death in the futile attempt to reach my presence? Do they want to be saints? Do they think that thus they gain the vision of God? [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/i-have-created.md) > I never thought it would be easy to serve God. I just didn't think it would be this hard. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/i-never-thought.md) > Power bases are very dangerous because they attract people who are truly insane, people who seek power only for the sake of power. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/power-bases-are.md) > "Hwi helps me. We had something few experience. We were joined in our strengths rather than in our weaknesses." > > "And look what it got you!" > > "Yes, and pray that you get the same!" [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/hwi-helps-me-we-had.md) > When I was most angry, and he saw himself through my eyes, he said: "How dare you be offended by me?" It was then — that he made me look into the horror... that he had seen. And I was only glad that I did not have to make his decision... that I could content myself with being a follower. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/when-i-was.md) > In all of my universe I have seen no law of nature, unchanging and inexorable. This universe presents only changing]] relationships which are sometimes seen as laws by short-lived awareness. These fleshy sensoria which we call self are ephemera withering in the blaze of infinity, fleeting aware of temporary conditions which confine our activities and change as our activities change. If you must label the absolute, use its proper name: Temporary. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/in-all-of-my-universe.md) > Your original unselfish choice fills you now with selfishness. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/your-original-unselfish.md) > "I sneered at [Lord Leto], too. I threw his own words from the Oral History back at him: 'Give to the greater glory of God!' He laughed at me. He laughed and asked how I could give what already belonged to God?" [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/i-sneered-at-lord.md) > You think power may be the most unstable of all human achievements? Then what of the apparent exceptions to this inherent instability? Some families endure. Very powerful religious bureaucracies have been known to endure. Consider the relationship between faith and power. Are they mutually exclusive when each depends upon the other? The Bene Gesserit have been reasonably secure within the loyal walls of faith for thousands of years. But where has their power gone? [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/you-think-power.md) > What am I? The ultimate loner forced to look at what might have been. Every day I look at it... [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/what-am-i-the.md) > The haze of nostalgia covers their days among their sisters, making those days into something different than they were. That's the way today changes history. All contemporaries do not inhabit the same time. The past is always changing, but few realize it. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/the-haze-of-nostalgia.md) > "There are inevitably more than enough words. You record them in your marvelous memory even now. And someday, my journals will be discovered - more words. I warn you that you read my words at your peril. The wordless movement of terrible events lies just below their surface. Be deaf! You do not need to hear or, hearing, you do not need to remember. How soothing it is to forget. And how dangerous!" [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/there-are-inevitably.md) > "My Uncle Malky always said the Lord Leto never responded to prayer. He said the Lord Leto looked on prayer as attempted coercion, a form of violence against the chosen god, telling the immortal what to do: Give me a miracle, God, or I won't believe in you!" [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/my-uncle-malky-always.md) > Paradox is a pointer telling you to look beyond it. If paradoxes bother you, that betrays your deep desire for absolutes. The relativist treats a paradox merely as interesting, perhaps amusing or even, dreadful thought, educational. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/paradox-is-a-pointer.md) > Some believe, that you must compromise integrity with a certain amount of dirty work before you can put genius to work. They say the compromise begins when you come out of the sanctus intending to realize your ideals. Moneo says my solution is to stay within the sanctus, sending others to do my dirty work. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/some-believe-that.md) > We are primal elements linking one piece of Time to another. And when we have passed, everything behind us will drop off into no-sound, a place like the no-room of the Ixians, yet never again the same as it was before we came. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/we-are-primal.md) > As long as there is life, every ending is a beginning. And I would save humankind, even from itself. This is why no death in the perpetuation of humankind can be a complete failure. This is why a birth touches us so deeply. This is why the most tragic death is the death of a youth. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/as-long-as-there.md) > The difference between a good administrator and a bad one is about five heartbeats. Good administrators make immediate choices ... [that] usually can be made to work. A bad administrator, on the other hand, hesitates, diddles around, asks for committees, for research and reports. Eventually, he acts in ways which create serious problems...A bad administrator is more concerned with reports than with decisions. He wants the hard record which he can display as an excuse for his errors... [Good administrators] depend on verbal orders. They never lie about what they've done if their verbal orders cause problems, and they surround themselves with people able to act wisely on the basis of verbal orders. Often, the most important piece of information is that something has gone wrong. Bad administrators hide their mistakes until it's too late to make corrections ... One of the hardest things to find is people who actually make decisions. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/the-difference-between.md) > How persistent it is, this demand that our gods be perfect. The Greeks were much more reasonable about such things. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/how-persistent-it-is-this.md) > The sins of this universe would trouble anyone. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/the-sins-of-this.md) > Did you build high walls around you only to sit within them and indulge in self-pity? [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/did-you-build.md) > "I am all of God that need be seen. I am the word become a miracle. I am all of my ancestors. Is that not miracle enough? What more could you possibly want? Ask yourself: Where is there a greater miracle?" [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/i-am-all.md) > It is all around you — the feudatory, the diocese, the corporation, the platoon, the sports club, the dance troupes, the rebel cell, the planning council, the prayer group... each with its master and servants, its host and parasites. And the swarms of alienating devices (including these very words!) tend eventually to be enlisted in the argument for a return to "those better times." I despair of teaching you other ways. You have square thoughts which resist circles. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/it-is-all.md) > I am the most ardent people-watcher who ever lived. I watch them inside me and outside. Past and present can mingle with odd impositions in me. And as the metamorphosis continues in my flesh wonderful things happen to my senses. It's as though I sensed everything close-up. I have extremely acute hearing and vision, plus a sense of smell extraordinarily discriminating. I can detect and identify pheromones at three parts per million. I know. I have tested it. You cannot hide very much from my senses. I think it would horrify you what I can detect by smell alone. Your pheromones tell me what you are doing or are prepared to do. And gesture and posture! I stared for half a day once at an old man sitting on a bench in Arrakeen. He was a fifth-generation descendant of Stilgar the Naib and did not even know it. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/i-am-the.md) > Let me but imagine a topic — say... men who have died by the sword— and I have them in all of their gore, every image intact, every moan, every grimace. Joys of motherhood, I think, and the birthing beds are mine. Serial baby smiles and the sweet cooings of new generations. The first walkings of toddlers and the first victories of youths brought forth for me to share. They tumble one upon another until I can see little else but sameness and repetition. "Keep it all intact," I warn myself. Who can deny the value of such experiences, the worth of the learning through which I view each new instant? Ahhh, but it's the past. Don't you understand? It's only the past! [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/let-me-but.md) > The prophet is not diverted by illusions of past, present and future. The fixity of language determines such linear distinctions. Prophets hold a key to the lock in a language. The mechanical image remains only an image to them. This is not a mechanical universe. The linear progression of events is imposed by the observer. Cause and effect? That's not it at all. The prophet utters fateful words. You glimpse a thing "destined to occur." But the prophetic instant releases something of infinite portent and power. The universe undergoes a ghostly shift. Thus, the wise prophet conceals actuality behind shimmering labels. The uninitiated then believe the prophetic language is ambiguous. The listener distrusts the prophetic messenger. Instinct tells you how the utterance blunts the power of such words. The best prophets lead you up to the curtain and let you peer through for yourself. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/the-prophet-is-not.md) > The machine cannot anticipate every problem of importance to humans. It is the difference between serial bits and an unbroken continuum. We have the one; machines are confined to the other. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/the-machine-cannot.md) > Governments can be useful to the governed only so long as inherent tendencies toward tyranny are restrained. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/governments-can-be-useful.md) > The trance-state of prophecy is like no other visionary experience. It is not a retreat from the raw exposure of the senses (as many trance states) but an immersion in a multitude of new movements. Things move. It is an ultimate pragmatism in the midst of Infinity, a demanding consciousness where you come at last into the unbroken awareness that the universe moves of itself, that it changes, that its rules change, that nothing remains permanent or absolute throughout all such movement, that mechanical explanations for anything can work only within precise confinements and, once the walls are broken down, the old explanations shatter and dissolve, blown away by new movements. The things you see in this trance are sobering, often shattering. They demand your utmost effort to remain whole, and even so, you emerge from that state profoundly changed. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/the-trance-state-of-prophecy.md) > You should never be in the company of anyone with whom you would not want to die. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/you-should-never.md) > Most civilization is based on cowardice. It's so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/most-civilization-is-based.md) > I give you eons of life which slips gently toward death without fuss or stirring, without even asking 'Why?' I show you the false happiness and the shadow-catastrophe called Leto, the God Emperor. Now, will you learn the real happiness? [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/i-give-you.md) > The problem of leadership is inevitably: Who will play God? [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/the-problem-of-leadership.md) > You, the first person to encounter my chronicles for at least four thousand years, beware. Do not feel honored by your primacy in reading the revelations of my Ixian storehouse. You will find much pain in it. Other than the few glimpses required to assure me that the Golden Path continued, I never wanted to peer beyond those four millennia. Therefore, I am not sure what the events in my journals may signify to your times. I only know that my journals have suffered oblivion and that the events which I recount have undoubtedly been submitted to historical distortion for eons. I assure you that the ability to view our futures can become a bore. Even to be thought of as a god, as I certainly was, can become ultimately boring. It has occurred to me more than once that holy boredom is good and sufficient reason for the invention of free will. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/you-the-first.md) > I assure you from a God's Olympian perch that government is a shared myth. When the myth dies, the government dies. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/i-assure-you.md) > You must remember that I have at my internal demand every expertise known to our history. This is the fund of energy I draw upon when I address the mentality of war. If you have not heard the moaning cries of the wounded and dying, you do not know about war. I have heard those cries in such numbers that they haunt me. I have cried out myself in the aftermath of battle. I have suffered wounds in every epoch-wounds from fist and club and rock, from shell-studded limb and bronze sword, from the mace and the cannon, from arrows and lasguns and the silent smothering of atomic dust, from biological invasions which blacken the tongue and drown the lungs, from the swift gush of flame and the silent working of slow poisons. . . and more I will not recount! I have seen and felt them all. To those who dare ask why I behave as I do, I say: With my memories, I can do nothing else. I am not a coward and once I was human. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/you-must-remember.md) > They believe that by risking death they pay the price of any violent behavior against enemies of their own choosing. They have the invader mentality. Nunepi does not believe himself responsible for anything done against aliens. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/they-believe-that.md) > The realization of what I am occurs in the timeless awareness which does not stimulate nor delude. I create a field without self or center, a field where even death becomes only analogy. I desire no results. I merely permit this field which has no goals nor desires, no perfections nor even visions of achievements. In that field, omnipresent primal awareness is all. It is the light which pours through the windows of my universe. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/the-realization-of-what.md) > Remember that there exists a certain malevolence about the formation of any social order. It is the struggle for existence by an artificial entity. Despotism and slavery hover at the edges. Many injuries occur and, thus, the need for laws. The law develops its own power structure, creating more wounds and new injustices. Such trauma can be healed by cooperation. The summons to cooperate identifies the healer. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/remember-that-there.md) > What is the most immediate danger to my stewardship? I will tell you. It is a true visionary, a person who has stood in the presence of God with the full knowledge of where he stands. Visionary ecstasy releases energies which are like energies of sex — uncaring for anything except creation. One act of creation can be much like another. Everything depends upon the vision. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/what-is-the-most.md) > "My uncle Malky use to say that love was a bad bargain because you get no guarantees." > > "Your uncle Malky was a wise man." > > "He was stupid! Love needs no guarantees." [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/my-uncle-malky.md) > "An Ixian machine? You defy the Jihad!" "There's a lesson in that, too. What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do without thinking. Things we do without thinking — there's the real danger." [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/an-ixian-machine.md) > Your Lord knows very well what is in your heart. Your soul suffices this day as a reckoner against you. I need no witnesses. You do not listen to your soul, but instead to your anger and your rage. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/your-lord-knows.md) > "You know it's love when you want to give joy and damn the consequences." [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/you-know-its.md) > Let there be no doubt that I am the assemblage of our ancestors, the arena in which they exercise my moments. They are my cells and I am their body. This is the fravashi of which I speak, the soul, the collective unconscious, the source of archetypes, the repository of all trauma and joy. I am the choice of their awakening. My samhadi is their samhadi. Their experiences are mine! Their knowledge distilled is my inheritance. Those billions are my one. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/let-there-be-no-doubt.md) > What is the most profound difference between us, between you and me? You already know it. It's these ancestral memories. Mine come at me in the full glare of awareness. Yours work from your blind side. Some call it instinct or fate. The memories apply their leverages to each of us — on what we think and what we do. You think you are immune to such influences? I am Galileo. I stand here and tell you: "Yet it moves." That which moves can exert its force in ways no mortal power ever before dared stem. I am here to dare this. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/what-is-the.md) > I tell you we are a marvel and my memories leave no doubt of this. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/i-tell-you.md) > The three legs of the agreement-tripod are desire, data and doubt. Accuracy and honesty have nothing to do with it. ... Desire brings the participants together. Data sets the limits of their dialogue. Doubt frames their questions. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/the-three-legs.md) > Enemies strengthen you. Allies weaken. I tell you this in the hope that it will help you understand why I act as I do in the full knowledge that great forces accumulate in my Empire with but one wish — the wish to destroy me. You who read these words may know full well what actually happened, but I doubt that you understand it. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/enemies-strengthen-you.md)