There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression
to develop psychic muscles.
-from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression
to develop psychic muscles.
-from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
The hands move, the lips move --
Ideas gush from his words,
And his eyes devour!
He is an island of Selfdom.
-description from "A Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
To attempt an understanding of Muad'Dib without understanding his mortal
enemies, the Harkonnens, is to attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood.
It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing Darkness. It cannot be.
-from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
You cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion. This
power struggle permeates the training, educating and disciplining of the
orthodox community. Because of this pressure, the leaders of such a community
inevitably must face that ultimate internal question: to succumb to complete
opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing
themselves for the sake of the orthodox ethic.
-from "Muad'Dib: The Religious Issues" by the Princess Irulan
A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are
correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. To begin your study of
the life of Muad'Dib, then, take care that you first place him in his time:
born in the 57th year of the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV. And take the most
special care that you locate Muad'Dib in his place: the planet Arrakis. Do not
be deceived by the fact that he was born on Caladan and lived his first fifteen
years there. Arrakis, the planet known as Dune, is forever his place.
-from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife--chopping off what's incomplete and
saying: "Now, it's complete because it's ended here."
-from "Collected Sayings of, Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
There is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe. It has symmetry,
elegance, and grace -- those qualities you find always in that which the true
artist captures. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, in the way sand
trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of the creosote bush or the
pattern of its leaves. We try to copy these patterns in our lives and our
society, seeking the rhythms, the dances, the forms that comfort. Yet, it is
possible to see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. It is clear that
the ultimate pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all things
move toward death.
-from "The Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
Many have marked the speed with which Muad'Dib learned the necessities of
Arrakis. The Bene Gesserit, of course, know the basis of this speed. For the
others, we can say that Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was
in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could
learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn,
and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad'Dib knew that every
experience carries its lesson.
-from "The Humanity of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
Greatness is a transitory 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. He must reflect what is
projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is
what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that
permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional
greatness will destroy a man.
-from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
There is a legend that the instant the Duke Leto Atreides died a meteor
streaked across the skies above his ancestral palace on Caladan.
-the Princess Irulan: "Introduction to A Child's History of Muad'Dib"
Thus spoke St. Alia-of-the-Knife: "The Reverend Mother must combine the
seductive wiles of a courtesan with the untouchable majesty of a virgin
goddess, holding these attributes in tension so long as the powers of her youth
endure. For when youth and beauty have gone, she will find that the
place-between, once occupied by tension, has become a wellspring of cunning and
resourcefulness."
-from "Muad'Dib, Family Commentaries" by the Princess Irulan
O Seas of Caladan,
O people of Duke Leto--
Citadel of Leto fallen,
Fallen forever . . .
-from "Songs of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
What do you despise? By this are you truly known.
-from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
You have read that Muad'Dib had no playmates his own age on Caladan. The
dangers were too great. But Muad'Dib did have wonderful companion-teachers.
There was Gurney Halleck, the troubadour-warrior. You will sing some of
Gurney's songs, as you read along in this book. There was Thufir Hawat, the old
Mentat Master of Assassins, who struck fear even into the heart of the Padishah
Emperor. There were Duncan Idaho, the Swordmaster of the Ginaz; Dr. Wellington
Yueh, a name black in treachery but bright in knowledge; the Lady Jessica, who
guided her son in the Bene Gesserit Way, and -- of course -- the Duke Leto,
whose qualities as a father have long been overlooked.
-from "A Child's History of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
On that first day when Muad'Dib rode through the streets of Arrakeen with his
family, some of the people along the way recalled the legends and the prophecy
and they ventured to shout: "Mahdi!" But their shout was more a question than a
statement, for as yet they could only hope he was the one foretold as the Lisan
al-Gaib, the Voice from the Outer World. Their attention was focused, too, on
the mother, because they had heard she was a Bene Gesserit and it was obvious
to them that she was like the other Lisan al-Gaib.
-from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the
terrors of the future.
-from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
“There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in
which you discover your father is a man--with human flesh.”
-from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
“There is no escape--we pay for the violence of our ancestors. ”
-from "The Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
YUEH (yu'e), Wellington (weling-tun), Stdrd 10,082-10,191; medical doctor of
the Suk School (grd Stdrd 10,112); md: Wanna Marcus, B.G. (Stdrd
10,092-10,186?); chiefly noted as betrayer of Duke Leto Atreides. (Cf:
Bibliography, Appendix VII [Imperial Conditioning] and Betrayal, The.)
-from "Dictionary of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
What had the Lady Jessica to sustain her in her time of trial? Think you
carefully on this Bene Gesserit proverb and perhaps you will see: "Any road
followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just
a little bit to test that it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you
cannot see the mountain."
-from "Muad'Dib: Family Commentaries" by the Princess Irulan
“Yueh! Yueh! Yueh!" goes the refrain. ”A million deaths were not enough for
Yueh!"
-from "A Child's History of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
Over the exit of the Arrakeen landing field, crudely carved as though with a
poor instrument, there was an inscription that Muad'Dib was to repeat many
times. He saw it that first night on Arrakis, having been brought to the ducal
command post to participate in his father's first full staff conference. The
words of the inscription were a plea to those leaving Arrakis, but they fell
with dark import on the eyes of a boy who had just escaped a close brush with
death. They said: "O you who know what we suffer here, do not forget us in your
prayers. "
-from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
It is said that the Duke Leto blinded himself to the perils of Arrakis, that he
walked heedlessly into the pit. Would it not be more likely to suggest he had
lived so long in the presence of extreme danger he misjudged a change in its
intensity? Or is it possible he deliberately sacrificed himself that his son
might find a better life? All evidence indicates the Duke was a man not easily
hoodwinked.
-from "Muad'Dib: Family Commentaries" by the Princess Irulan
My Father had only one real friend, I think. That was Count Hasimir Fenring,
the genetic-eunuch and one of the deadliest fighters in the Imperium.
-From "In My Father's House" by the Princess Irulan
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.
-from "The Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
Muad'Dib tells us in "A Time of Reflection" that his first collisions with
Arrakeen necessities were the true beginnings of his education. He learned then
how to pole the sand for its weather, learned the language of the wind's
needles stinging his skin, learned how the nose can buzz with sand-itch and how
to gather his body's precious moisture around him to guard it and preserve it.
As his eyes assumed the blue of the Ibad, he learned the Chakobsa way.
-Stilgar's preface to "Muad'Dib, the Man" by the Princess Irulan
At the age of fifteen, he had already learned silence.
-from "A Child's History of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
How do we approach the study of Muad'Dib's father? A man of surpassing warmth
and surprising coldness was the Duke Leto Atreides. Yet, many facts open the
way to this Duke: his abiding love for his Bene Gesserit lady; the dreams he
held for his son; the devotion with which men served him. You see him there --
a man snared by Destiny, a lonely figure with his light dimmed behind the glory
of his son. Still, one must ask: What is the son but an extension of the father?
-from "Muad'Dib, Family Commentaries" by the Princess Irulan
The Fremen were supreme in that 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.
-from "The Wisdom of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
God created Arrakis to train the faithful.
-from "The Wisdom of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan