Historians exercise great power and some of them know it. They recreate the p
ast, changing it to fit their own interpretations. Thus, they change the futu
re as well.
-Leto II, His Voice, from Dar-es-Balat
Historians exercise great power and some of them know it. They recreate the p
ast, changing it to fit their own interpretations. Thus, they change the futu
re as well.
-Leto II, His Voice, from Dar-es-Balat
Explosions are also compressions of time. Observable changes in the natural u
niverse all are explosive to some degree and from some point of view; otherwis
e you would not notice them. Smooth Continuity of change, if slowed sufficien
tly, goes without notice by observers whose time/attention span is too short.
Thus, I tell you, I have seen changes you would never have marked.
-Leto II
Quite naturally, holders of power wish to suppress wild research. Unrestricte
d questing after knowledge has a long history of producing unwanted competitio
n. The powerful want a "safe line of investigations," which will develop only
those products and ideas that can be controlled and, most important, that wil
l allow the larger part of the benefits to be captured by inside investors. U
nfortunately, a random universe full of relative variables does not insure suc
h a "safe line of investigations."
-Assessment of Ix, Bene Gesserit Archives
It is your fate, forgetfulness. All of the old lessons of life, you lose and
gain and lose and gain again.
-Leto II, the Voice of Dar-es-Balat
The significant fact is this: No Bene Tleilax female has ever been seen away
from the protection of their core planets. (Face Dancer mules who simulate fe
males do not count in this analysis. They cannot be breeders.) The Tleilaxu
sequester their females to keep them from our hands. This is our primary dedu
ction. It must also be in the eggs that the Tleilaxu Masters conceal their mo
st essential secrets.
-Bene Gesserit Analysis -- Archives #XOXTM99 ..... 041
Has not religion claimed a patent on creation for all of these millennia?
-The Tleilaxu Question, from Muad'dib Speaks
The failure of CHOAM? Quite simple: They ignore the fact that larger commerc
ial powers wait at the edges of their activities, powers that could swallow th
em the way a slig swallows garbage. This is the true threat of the Scattering
-- to them and to us all.
-Bene Gesserit Council notes, Archives #SXX90CH
Law always chooses sides on the basis of enforcement power. Morality and lega
l niceties have little to do with it when the real question is: Who has the c
lout?
-Bene Gesserit Council Proceedings: Archives #XOX232
The trouble with some kinds of warfare (and be certain the Tyrant knew this,
because it is implicit in his lesson) is that they destroy all moral decency i
n susceptible types. Warfare of these kinds will dump the destroyed survivors
back into an innocent population that is incapable of even imagining what suc
h returned soldiers might do.
-Teachings of the Golden Path, Bene Gesserit Archives
People always want something more than immediate joy or that deeper sense call
ed happiness. This is one of the secrets by which we shape the fulfillment of
our designs. The something more assumes amplified power with people who cann
ot give it a name or who (most often the case) do not even suspect its existen
ce. Most people only react unconsciously to such hidden forces. Thus, we hav
e only to call a calculated something more into existence, define it and give
it shape, then people will follow.
-Leadership Secrets of the Bene Gesserit
May you die on Caladan!
-Ancient Drinking Toast
In my estimation, more misery has been created by reformers than by any other
force in human history. Show me someone who says "Something must be done!" an
d I will show you a head full of vicious intentions that have no other outlet.
What we must strive for always! is to find the natural flow and go with it.
-The Reverend Mother Taraza, Conversational Record, BG File GSXXMAT9
The world is for the living. Who are they?
We dared the dark to reach the white and warm.
She was the wind when the wind was in my way.
Alive at noon, I perished in her form.
Who rise from the flesh to spirit know the fall:
The word outleaps the world and light is all.
-Theodore Roethke (Historical Quotations: Dar-es-Balat)
Liberty and Freedom are complex concepts. They go back to religious ideas of
Free Will and are related to the Ruler Mystique implicit in absolute monarchs.
Without absolute monarchs patterned after the Old Gods and ruling by the gra
ce of a belief in religious indulgence, Liberty and Freedom would never have g
ained their present meaning. These ideals owe their very existence to past ex
amples of oppression. And the forces that maintain such ideas will erode unle
ss renewed by dramatic teaching or new oppressions. This is the most basic ke
y to my life.
-Leto II, God Emperor of Dune: Dar-es-Balat Records
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
We are not looking at a new state of matter but at a newly recognized relation
ship between consciousness and matter, which provides a more penetrating insig
ht into the workings of prescience. The oracle shapes a projected inner unive
rse to produce new external probabilities out of forces that are not understoo
d. There is no need to understand these forces before using them to shape the
physical universe. Ancient metal workers had no need to understand the molec
ular and submolecular complexities of their steel, bronze, copper, gold, and t
in. They invented mystical powers to describe the unknown while they continue
d to operate their forges and wield their hammers.
-Mother Superior Taraza, Argument in Council
When strangers meet, great allowance should be made for differences of custom
and training.
-The Lady Jessica, from "Wisdom of Arrakis"
There was a man who sat each day looking out through a narrow vertical opening
where a single board had been removed from a tall wooden fence. Each day a w
ild ass of the desert passed outside the fence and across the narrow opening -
- first the nose, then the head, the forelegs, the long brown back, the hindle
gs, and lastly the tail. One day, the man leaped to his feet with the light o
f discovery in his eyes and he shouted for all who could hear him: "It is obv
ious! The nose causes the tail!"
-Stories of the Hidden Wisdom, from the Oral History of Rakis
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"
Justice? Who asks for justice. We make our own justice. We make it here on
Arrakis -- win or die. Let us not rail about justice as long as we have arms
and the freedom to use them.
-Leto I: Bene Gesserit Archives
The existence of no-ships raises the possibility of destroying entire planets
without retaliation. A large object, asteroid or equivalent, may be sent agai
nst the planet. Or the people can be set against each other by sexual subvers
ion, and then can be armed to destroy themselves. These Honored Matres appear
to favor this latter technique.
-Bene Gesserit Analysis
O you who know what we suffer here, do not forget us in your prayers.
-Sign over Arrakeen Landing Field (Historical Records: Dar-es-Balat)
“I must rule with eye and claw -- as the hawk among lesser birds.”
-Atreides assertion (Ref: BG Archives)
Concealed behind strong barriers the heart becomes ice.
-Darwi Odrade, Argument in Council
What social inheritances went outward with the Scattering? We know those time
s intimately. We know both the mental and physical settings. The Lost Ones t
ook with them a consciousness confined mostly to manpower and hardware. There
was a desperate need for room to expand driven by the myth of Freedom. Most
had not learned the deeper lesson of the Tyrant, that violence builds its own
limits. The Scattering was wild and random movement interpreted as growth (ex
pansion). It was goaded by a profound fear (often unconscious) of stagnation
and death.
-The Scattering: Bene Gesserit Analysis (Archives)
Nothing surpasses the complexity of the human mind.
-Leto II: Dar-es-Balat Records
The long table on the right is set for a banquet of roast desert hare in sauce
cepeda. The other dishes, clockwise to the right from the far end of the tab
le, are aplomage sirian, chukka under glass, coffee with melange (note the haw
k crest of the Atreides on the urn), pot-a-oie and, in the Balut crystal bottl
e, sparkling Caladan wine. Note the ancient poison detector concealed in the
chandelier.
-Dar-es-Balat, Description at a Museum Display
Memory never recaptures reality. Memory reconstructs. All reconstructions ch
ange the original, becoming external frames of reference that inevitably fall
short.
-Mentat Handbook
Survival of self, of species, and of environment, these are what drive humans.
You can observe how the order of importance changes in a lifetime. What are
the things of immediate concern at a given age? Weather? The state of the d
igestion? Does she (or he) really care? All of those various hungers that fl
esh can sense and hope to satisfy. What else could possibly matter?
-Leto II to Hwi Noree, His Voice: Dar-es-Balat
Technology, in common with many other activities, tends toward avoidance of ri
sks by investors. Uncertainty is ruled out if possible. Capital investment f
ollows this rule, since people generally prefer the predictable. Few recogniz
e how destructive this can be, how it imposes severe limits on variability and
thus makes whole populations fatally vulnerable to the shocking ways our univ
erse can throw the dice.
-Assessment of Ix, Bene Gesserit Archives