Frank Herbert

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?

Technology, in common with many other activities, tends toward avoidance of risks by investors. Uncertainty is ruled out if possible. Capital investment follows this rule, since people generally prefer the predictable. Few recognize how destructive this can be, how it imposes severe limits on variability and thus makes whole populations fatally vulnerable to the shocking ways our universe can throw the dice.

Looking back on it, I realize I did the right thing instinctively. You don't write for success. That takes part of your attention away from the writing. If you're really doing it, that's all you're doing: writing.

I never thought it would be easy to serve God. I just didn't think it would be this hard.

Power bases are very dangerous because they attract people who are truly insane, people who seek power only for the sake of power.

"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!"

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.

At the quantum level our universe can be seen as an indeterminable place, predictable in a statistical way only when you employ large enough numbers. Between that universe and a relatively predictable one where the passage of a single planet can be timed to a picosecond, other forces come into play. For the in-between universe where we find our daily lives, that which you believe is a dominant force. Your beliefs order the unfolding of daily events. If enough of us believe, a new thing can be made to exist. Belief structure creates a filter through which chaos is sifted into order.

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.

This is the awe-inspiring universe of magic: There are no atoms, only waves and motions all around. Here, you discard all belief in barriers to understanding. You put aside understanding itself. This universe cannot be seen, cannot be heard, cannot be detected in any way by fixed perceptions. It is the ultimate void where no preordained screens occur upon which forms may be projected. You have only one awareness here — the screen of the magi: Imagination! Here, you learn what it is to be human. You are a creator of order, of beautiful shapes and systems, an organizer of chaos.

Your original unselfish choice fills you now with selfishness.

"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?"