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Religion, too, is a weapon. What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government?

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There exists a limit to the force even the most powerful may apply without destroying themselves. Judging this limit is the true artistry of governmen...more

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Government cannot be religious and self-assertive at the same time. Religious experience needs a spontaneity which laws inevitably suppress. And you c...more

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Once . . . long ago, he’d thought of himself as an inventor of government. But the invention had fallen into old patterns. It was like some hideous co...more

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Governments always commit their entire populations when the demands grow heavy enough. By their passive acceptance, these populations become accessori...more

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In their passion for sameness, the tyrants made themselves more and more powerful. All others grew correspondingly weaker and weaker. New bureaus and ...more

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Does a population have informed consent when that population is not taught the inner workings of its monetary system, and then is drawn, all unknowing...more

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Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.

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Don't give over all of your critical faculties to people in power, no matter how admirable those people may appear to be. Beneath the hero's facade yo...more

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Safaris through ancestral memories teach me many things. The patterns, ahhh, the patterns. Liberal bigots are the ones who trouble me the most. I dist...more

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Dune was a world of paradox now—a world under siege, yet the center of power. To come under siege, he decided, was the inevitable fate of power.

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Create or arouse such unbridled forces and you built carnal fantasies of enormous complexity. You could lead whole populations around by their desires...more

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Democracy is susceptible to being led astray by having scapegoats paraded in front of the electorate. Get the rich, the greedy, the criminals, the stu...more

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All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the co...more

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Good governance never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the...more