“These are the illusions of popular history which a successful religion
must
promote: Evil men never prosper; only the brave deserve the fair;
honesty
is the best policy; actions speak louder than words; virtue
always
triumphs; a good deed is its own reward; any bad human can be reformed;
religious
talismans protect one from demon possession; only females understand
ancient
mysteries; the rich are doomed to unhappiness…”
—The Instruction Manual: Missionaria
Protectiva
“A sophisticated human can become primitive. What this really
means
is that the human’s way of life changes. Old values change,
become
linked to the landscape with its plants and animals. This new
existence
requires a working knowledge of those multiplex and cross-linked events
usually
referred to as nature. It requires a measure of respect for the
inertial
power within such natural systems. When a human gains this
working
knowledge and respect, that is called ‘being primitive.’ The converse,
of
course, is equally true: the primitive can become sophisticated, but
not
without accepting dreadful psychological damage.”
—The Leto Commentary, after Harq al-Ada
“Atrocity is recognized as such by victim and perpetrator alike, by all
who
learn about it at whatever remove. Atrocity has no excuses, no
mitigating
argument. Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past.
Atrocity
merely arms the future for more atrocity. It is self-perpetuation
upon
itself–a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits atrocity also
commits
those future atrocities thus bread.”
—The Apocrypha of Muad’Dib
“The assumption that humans exist within an essentially impermanent
universe,
taken as an operational precept, demands that the intellect become a
totally
aware balancing instrument. But the intellect can not react thus
without
involving the entire organism. Such an organism may be recognized
by
its burning, driving behavior. And thus it is with a society
treated
as organism. But here we encounter an old inertia.
Societies
move to the goading of ancient, reactive impulses. They demand
permanence.
Any attempt to display the universe of impermanence arouses rejection
patterns,
fear, anger, and despair. Then how do we explain the acceptance
of
prescience? Simply: the giver of prescient visions, because he
speaks
of an absolute (permanent) realization, may be greeted with the joy by
human
kind even while predicting the most dire events.”
—The Book of Leto, after Harq al-Ada
“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 leader.”
—Law and Governance, The Spacing Guild Manual
“The universe is just there. the universe neither threatens nor
promises.
It holds things beyond our sway: the fall of a meteor, the eruption of
a
spiceblow, growing old and dying. These are the realities of this
universe
and they must be faced regardless of how you feel about them. You
can
not fend off such realities with words. They will come at you in
their
own wordless way and then, then you will understand what is meant by
‘life
and death.’ Understanding this, you will be filled with joy.”
—Muad’Dib to his Fedaykin
“It is said of Muad’Dib that once when he saw a weed trying to grow
between
two rocks, he moved one of the rocks. Later, when he weed was
seen
to be flourishing, he covered it with the remaining rock. ‘That was its
fate,’
he explained.”
—The Commentaries
“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
“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 accepts 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 reach of common
understanding–symbols
such as those dealing with economic manipulation of 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.”
—Lecture to the Arrakeen War College
“Above all else, the mentat must be a generalist, not a
specialist.
It is wise to have decisions of great moment monitored by
generalists.
Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a
source
of useless nit-picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma. The
mentat-generalist,
on the other hand, could bring to decision-making a healthy common
sense.
He must not shut himself off from the broad sweep of what is happening
in
his universe. He must remain capable of saying: ‘There’s no real
mystery
about this at the moment. this is what we want now. It may
prove
wrong alter, but we’ll correct that when we come to it.’ The
mentat-generalist
must understand that anything which we can identify as our universe is
merely
part of larger phenomena. But the expert looks backward; he looks
into
the narrow standards of his own specialty. The generalist looks
outward;
he looks for living principles, knowing full well that such principles
change,
that they develop. It is to the characteristics of change itself
that
the mentat-generalist must look. There can be no permanent
catalogue
of such change, no handbook of manual. You must look at it with a
few
preconceptions as possible, asking yourself: ‘Now what is this thing
doing?’”
—The Mentat Handbook
“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 you fences. The packs ranging outside may not even
exist.”
—the Azhar Book; Shamra I:4
“If you believe certain words, you believe their hidden
arguments.
When you believe something is right or wrong, true or false, you
believe
that assumptions in the words which express the arguments. Such
assumptions
are often full of holes, but remain most precious to the convinced.”
—Open-Ended Proof from The Panoplia Prophetica
“Human kind periodically goes through a speedup of its affairs, thereby
experiencing
the race between the renewable vitality of the living and the beckoning
vitation
of decadence. In this periodic race, any pause becomes a
luxury.
Only then can one reflect that all is permitted; all is possible.”
—The Apocrypha of Muad’Dib
“Peace demands solutions, but we never reach living solutions; we only
work
toward them. A fixed solution is, by definition, a dead
solution.
The trouble with peace is that is tends to punish mistakes instead of
rewarding
brilliance.”
—an account of Muad’Dib
“Any path which narrows future possibilities may become a lethal
trap.
Humans are not threading their way through a maze; they scan a
vast
horizon filled with unique opportunities. The narrowing viewpoint
of
the maze should appeal only to creatures with their noses buried in the
sand.
Sexually produced uniqueness and differences are the life-protection of
the
species.
—The Spacing Guild Handbook
“The assumption that a whole system can be made to work better through
an
assault on its conscious elements betrays a dangerous ignorance.
This
has often been the ignorant approach of those who call themselves
scientists
and technologists.”
—The Butlarian Jihad by Harq al-Ada
