Discovery is dangerous . . . but so is life. A man unwilling to take risk is
doomed never to learn, never to grow, never to live.
-PLANETOLOGIST PARDOT KYNES, An Arrakis Primer, written for his son Liet
Discovery is dangerous . . . but so is life. A man unwilling to take risk is
doomed never to learn, never to grow, never to live.
-PLANETOLOGIST PARDOT KYNES, An Arrakis Primer, written for his son Liet
When faced with necessary actions, there are always choices. So long as the
job gets done.
-COUNT HASIMIR FENRING,
Dispatches from Arrakis
Muad'Dib could indeed, see the Future, but you must understand the limits of
this power. Think of sight. You have eyes, yet cannot see without light. If you
are on the floor of a valley, you cannot see beyond your valley. Just so,
Muad'Dib could not always choose to look across the mysterious terrain. He
tells us that a single obscure decision of prophecy, perhaps the choice of one
word over another, could change the entire aspect of the future. He tells us
“The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a
narrow door.” And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe
course, warning "That path leads ever down into stagnation."
-from "Arrakis Awakening" by the Princess Irulan
The individual is shocked by the overwhelming discovery of his own mortality.
The species, however, is different. It need not die.
-PARDOT KYNES, An Arrakis Primer
And that day dawned when Arrakis lay at the hub of the universe with the wheel
poised to spin.
-from "Arrakis Awakening" by the Princess Irulan
Most discipline is hidden discipline, designed not to liberate but to limit.
Do not ask Why? Be cautious with How? Why? leads inexorably to paradox. How
? traps you in a universe of cause and effect. Both deny the infinite.
-The Apocrypha of Arrakis
Beneath a world -- in its rocks, its dirt and sedimentary overlays -- there you
find the planet's memory, the complete analog of its existence, its ecological
memory.
-PARROT KYNES, An Arrakis Primer
When strangers meet, great allowance should be made for differences of custom
and training.
-The Lady Jessica, from "Wisdom of Arrakis"
The worst potential competition for any organism can come from its own kind.
The species consumes necessities. Growth is limited by that necessity which i
s present in the least amount. The least favorable condition controls the rat
e of growth. (Law of the Minimum)
-From "Lessons of Arrakis"
And Muad'Dib stood before them, and he said: "Though we deem the captive dead,
yet does she live. For her seed is my seed and her voice is my voice. And she
sees unto the farthest reaches of possibility. Yea, unto the vale of the
unknowable does she see because of me."
-from "Arrakis Awakening" by the Princess Irulan
And it came to pass in the third year of the Desert War that Paul-Muad'Dib lay
alone in the Cave of Birds beneath the kiswa hangings of an inner cell. And he
lay as one dead, caught up in the revelation of the Water of Life, his being
translated beyond the boundaries of time by the poison that gives life. Thus
was the prophecy made true that the Lisan al-Gaib might be both dead and alive.
-"Collected Legends of Arrakis" by the Princess Irulan
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
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
Many elements of the Imperium believe they hold the ultimate power: the
Spacing Guild with their monopoly on interstellar travel, CHOAM with its
economic stranglehold, the Bene Gesserit with their secrets, the Mentats with
their control of mental processes, House Corrino with their throne, the Great
and Minor Houses of the Landsraad with their extensive holdings. Woe to us on
the day that one of those factions decides to prove the point.
-COUNT HASIMIR FENRING,
Dispatches from Arrakis
CHALLENGE: "Have you seen The Preacher?"
RESPONSE: "I have seen a sandworm."
CHALLENGE: "What about that sandworm?"
RESPONSE: "It gives us the air we breathe."
CHALLENGE: "Then why do we destroy its land?"
RESPONSE: "Because Shai-Hulud [sandworm deified] orders it."
-Riddles of Arrakis by Harq al-Ada
In plotting any course of revenge, one must savor the anticipation phase and
all its moments, for the actual execution often differs widely from the
original plan.
-HASIMIR FENRING,
Dispatches from Arrakis
This Fremen religious adaptation, then, is the source of what we now recognize
as "The Pillars of the Universe," whose Qizara Tafwid are among us all with
signs and proofs and prophecy. They bring us the Arrakeen mystical fusion whose
profound beauty is typified by the stirring music built on the old forms, but
stamped with the new awakening. Who has not heard and been deeply moved by "The
Old Man's Hymn"?
I drove my feet through a desert
Whose mirage fluttered like a host.
Voracious for glory, greedy for danger,
I roamed the horizons of al-Kulab,
Watching time level mountains
In its search and its hunger for me.
And I saw the sparrows swiftly approach,
Bolder than the onrushing wolf.
They spread in the tree of my youth.
I heard the flock in my branches
And was caught on their beaks and claws!
-from "Arrakis Awakening" by the Princess Irulan
There is no such thing as a law of nature. There is only a series of laws
relating to man's practical experience with nature. These are laws of man's
activities. They change as man's activities change.
-PARROT KYNES, An Arrakis Primer
This was Muad'Dib's achievement: He saw the subliminal reservoir of each
individual as an unconscious bank of memories going back to the primal cell of
our common genesis. Each of us, he said, can measure out his distance from that
common origin. Seeing this and telling of it, he made the audacious leap of
decision. Muad'Dib set himself the task of integrating genetic memory into
ongoing evaluation. Thus did he break through Time's veils, making a single
thing of the future and the past. That was Muad'Dib's creation embodied in his
son and his daughter.
-Testament of Arrakis by Harq al-Ada
Nature commits no errors; right and wrong are human categories.
-PARDOT KYNES, Arrakis Lectures
Some say that the anticipation of a thing is better than the thing itself. In
my view, this is utter nonsense. Any fool can imagine a prize. I desire the
tangible.
-HASIMIR FENRING, Letters from Arrakis
Our timetable will achieve the stature of a natural phenomenon. A planet's
life is a vast, tightly interwoven fabric. Vegetation and animal changes will
be determined at first by the raw physical forces we manipulate. As they
establish themselves, though, our changes will become controlling influences in
their own right -- and we will have to deal with them, too. Keep in mind,
though, that we need control only three percent of the energy surface -- only
three percent -- to tip the entire structure over into our self-sustaining
system.
-PARDOT KYNES, Arrakis Dreams
It is said that the Fremen has no conscience, having lost it in a burning
desire for revenge. This is foolish. Only the rawest primitive and the
sociopath have no conscience. The Fremen possesses a highly evolved worldview
centered on the welfare of his people. His sense of belonging to the community
is almost stronger than his sense of self. It is only to outsiders that these
desert dwellers seem brutish . . . just as outsiders appear to them.
-PARDOT KYNES, The People of Arrakis