children of dune quotes

Church and State, scientific reason and faith, the individual and his
community, even progress and tradition -- all of these can be reconciled in the
teachings of Muad'Dib. He taught us that there exist no intransigent opposites
except in the beliefs of men. Anyone can rip aside the veil of Time. You can
discover the future in the past or in your own imagination. Doing this, you win
back your consciousness in your inner being. You know then that the universe is
a coherent whole and you are indivisible from it.

-The Preacher at Arrakeen, After Harq al-Ada

I saw his blood and a piece of his robe which had been ripped by sharp claws.
His sister reports vividly of the tigers, the sureness of their attack. We have
questioned one of the plotters, and others are dead or in custody. Everything
points to a Corrino plot. A Truthsayer has attested to this testimony.

-Stilgar's Report to the Landsraad Commission

melange (me'-lange also ma,lanj) n-s, origin uncertain (thought to derive from
ancient Terran Franzh): a. mixture of spices; b. spice of Arrakis (Dune) with
geriatric properties first noted by Yanshuph Ashkoko, royal chemist in reign of
Shakkad the Wise; Arrakeen melange, found only in deepest desert sands of
Arrakis, linked to prophetic visions of Paul Muad'Dib (Atreides), first Fremen
Mahdi; also employed by Spacing Guild Navigators and the Bene Gesserit.

-Dictionary Royal fifth edition

The child who refuses to travel in the father's harness, this is the symbol of
man's most unique capability. "I do not have to be what my father was. I do not
have to obey my father's rules or even believe everything he believed. It is my
strength as a human that I can make my own choices of what to believe and what
not to believe, of what to be and what not to be."

-Leto Atreides II, The Harq al-Ada Biography

The password was given to me by a man who died in the dungeons of Arrakeen. You
see, that is where I got this ring in the shape of a tortoise. It was in the
suk outside the city where I was hidden by the rebels. The password? Oh, that
has been changed many times since then. It was "Persistence." And the
countersign was "Tortoise." It got me out of there alive. That's why I bought
this ring: a reminder.

-Tagir Mohandis: Conversations with a Friend

Muad'Dib gave us a particular kind of knowledge about prophetic insight, about
the behavior which surrounds such insight and its influence upon events which
are seen to be "on line." (That is, events which are set to occur in a related
system which the prophet reveals and interprets.) As has been noted elsewhere,
such insight operates as a peculiar trap for the prophet himself. He can become
the victim of what he knows -- which is a relatively common human failing. The
danger is that those who predict real events may overtook the polarizing effect
brought about by overindulgence in their own truth. They tend to forget that
nothing in a polarized universe can exist without its opposite being present.

-The Prescient Vision, by Harq al-Ada

The spirit of Muad'Dib is more than words, more than the letter of the Law
which arises in his name. Muad'Dib must always be that inner outrage against
the complacently powerful, against the charlatans and the dogmatic fanatics. It
is that inner outrage which must have its say because Muad'Dib taught us one
thing above all others: that humans can endure only in a fraternity of social
justice.

-The Fedaykin Compact

The one-eyed view of our universe says you must not look far afield for
problems. Such problems may never arrive. Instead, tend to the wolf within your
fences. The packs ranging outside may not even exist.

-The Azhar Book; Shamra I:4

Limits of survival are set by climate, those long drifts of change which a
generation may fail to notice. And it is the extremes of climate which set the
pattern. Lonely, finite humans may observe climatic provinces, fluctuations of
annual weather and, occasionally may observe such things as "This is a colder
year than I've ever known. " Such things are sensible. But humans are seldom
alerted to the shifting average through a great span of years. And it is
precisely in this alerting that humans learn how to survive on any planet. They
must learn climate.

-Arrakis, the Transformation, After Harq al-Ada

If you believe certain words, you believe their hidden arguments. When you
believe something is right or wrong, true or false, you believe the assumptions
in the words which express the arguments. Such assumptions are often full of
holes, but remain most precious to the convinced.

-The Open-Ended Proof from, The Panoplia Prophetica

You have loved Caladan
And lamented its lost host --
But pain discovers
New lovers cannot erase
Those forever ghost.

-Refrain from The Habbanya Lament

Because of the one-pointed Time awareness in which the conventional mind
remains immersed, humans tend to think of everything in a sequential,
word-oriented framework. This mental trap produces very short-term concepts of
effectiveness and consequences, a condition of constant, unplanned response to
crises.

-Liet-Kynes, The Arrakis Workbook

As with so many other religions, Muad'Dib's Golden Elixir of Life degenerated
into external wizardry. Its mystical signs became mere symbols for deeper
psychological processes, and those processes, of course, ran wild. What they
needed was a living god, and they didn't have one, a situation which Muad'Dib's
son has corrected.

-Saying attributed to Lu Tung-pin, (Lu, The Guest of the Cavern)

The Fremen must return to his original faith, to his genius in forming human
communities; he must return to the past, where that lesson of survival was
learned in the struggle with Arrakis. The only business of the Fremen should be
that of opening his soul to the inner teachings. The worlds of the Imperium,
the Landsraad and the CHOAM Confederacy have no message to give him. They will
only rob him of his soul.

-The Preacher at Arrakeen

You Bene Gesserit call your activity of the Panoplia Prophetica a "Science of
Religion." Very well. I, a seeker after another kind of scientist, find this an
appropriate definition. You do, indeed, build your own myths, but so do all
societies. You I must warn, however. You are behaving as so many other
misguided scientists have behaved. Your actions reveal that you wish to take
something out of [away from] life. It is time you were reminded of that which
you so often profess: One cannot have a single thing without its opposite.

-The Preacher at Arrakeen: A Message to the Sisterhood

In this age when the means of human transport include devices which can span
the deeps of space in transtime, and other devices which can carry men swiftly
over virtually impassable planetary surfaces, it seems odd to think of
attempting long journeys afoot. Yet this remains a primary means of travel on
Arrakis, a fact attributed partly to preference and partly to the brutal
treatment which this planet reserves for anything mechanical. In the strictures
of Arrakis, human flesh remains the most durable and reliable resource for the
Hajj. Perhaps it is the implicit awareness of this fact which makes Arrakis the
ultimate mirror of the soul.

-Handbook of the Hajj

In all major socializing forces you will find an underlying movement to gain
and maintain power through the use of words. From witch doctor to priest to
bureaucrat it is all the same. A governed populace must be conditioned to
accept power-words as actual things, to confuse the symbolized system with the
tangible universe. In the maintenance of such a power structure, certain
symbols are kept out of the reach of common understanding -- symbols such as
those dealing with economic manipulation or those which define the local
interpretation of sanity. Symbol-secrecy of this form leads to the development
of fragmented sub-languages, each being a signal that its users are
accumulating some form of power. With this insight into a power process, our
Imperial Security Force must be ever alert to the formation of sub-languages.

-Lecture to the Arrakeen War College by, The Princess Irulan

Good government never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of
those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will
of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of
government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders.

-Law and Governance, The Spacing Guild Manual

Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic
forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as
the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in
the interests of the ruling class -- whether that class be hereditary royalty,
oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.

-Politics as Repeat Phenomenon: Bene Gesserit Training Manual

Fremen speech implies great concision, a precise sense of expression. It is
immersed in the illusion of absolutes. Its assumptions are a fertile ground for
absolutist religions. Furthermore, Fremen are fond of moralizing. They confront
the terrifying instability of all things with institutionalized statements.
They say: "We know there is no summa of all attainable knowledge; that is the
preserve of God. But whatever men can learn, men can contain." Out of this
knife-edged approach to the universe they carve a fantastic belief in signs and
omens and in their own destiny. This is an origin of their Kralizec legend: the
war at the end of the universe.

-Bene Gesserit Private Reports/folio 800881