Dune

by Frank Herbert

So I quoted the First Law of Mentat at her: ‘A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.’ That seemed to satisfy her.”

the proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On that path lies danger.

She sighed. “Thufir, I want you to examine your own emotional involvement in this. The natural human’s an animal without logic. Your projection of logic onto all affairs is unnatural, but suffered to continue for its usefulness.

How the mind gears itself for its environment, she thought. And she recalled a Bene Gesserit axiom: “The mind can go either direction under stress—toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training.”

“Give as few orders as possible,” his father had told him … once… long ago. “Once you’ve given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.” The Fremen knew this rule instinctively.