2020 is ending on a good note. I just finished Dune and this book was fantastic.

The plot line, the characters, the delightful nuggets of wisdom. This gem of a book lived up to its sci fi legend status, which I can now confirm.

Below are a few of my highlights:

A world is supported by four things 1) learning of wise 2) justice of the great 3) prayers of the righteous 4) valor of brave. But all are nothing without a ruler who knows the art of ruling.

He passed me in the hall like a man running to his enemy’s funeral.

It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn and how many more believe learning to be difficult.

Greatness is a transitionary experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth – making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in.

Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.

The meeting between ignorance and knowledge between brutality and culture – it begin sin the dignity with which we treat our dead.

The Fremen were supreme in the quality the ancients called – “spannungsbogen”- which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.

What do you despise? By this are you truly known.

My father once told me that respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. “Something cannot emerge from nothing” he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable “the truth” can be.

Photo by ruedi häberli on Unsplash.