God Emperor of Dune (Dune #4)

by Frank Herbert

The pattern of monarchies and similar systems has a message of value for all political forms. My memories assure me that governments of any kind could profit from this message. Governments can be useful to the governed only so long as inherent tendencies toward tyranny are restrained. Monarchies have some good features beyond their star qualities. They can reduce the size and parasitic nature of the management bureaucracy. They can make speedy decisions when necessary. They fit an ancient human demand for a parental (tribal/feudal) hierarchy where every person knows his place. It is valuable to know your place, even if that place is temporary. It is galling to be held in place against your will. This is why I teach about tyranny in the best possible way—by example. Even though you read these words after a passage of eons, my tyranny will not be forgotten. My Golden Path assures this. Knowing my message, I expect you to be exceedingly careful about the powers you delegate to any government. —THE STOLEN JOURNALS

“I never thought it would be easy to serve God,” she said. “I just didn’t think it would be this hard.”

“Religious institutions perpetuate a mortal master-servant relationship,” Leto said. “They create an arena which attracts prideful human power-seekers with all of their nearsighted prejudices!”

“The undeserving maintain power by promoting hysteria,” Moneo said. “The Atreides art is the art of ruling without hysteria, the art of being responsible for the uses of power.”

He felt her life ebbing. Fight the darkness, Siona! That was one thing the Atreides did. They fought for life. And now she was fighting for lives other than her own.

Given enough time for the generations to evolve, the predator produces particular survival adaptations in its prey which, through the circular operation of feedback, produce changes in the predator which again change the prey—etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. . . . Many powerful forces do the same thing. You can count religions among such forces. —THE STOLEN JOURNALS

Some live lives like summer moths, he thought. But I have burdens without end.

Most civilization is based on cowardice. It’s so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame. —THE STOLEN JOURNALS

You cannot understand history unless you understand its flowings, its currents and the ways leaders move within such forces. A leader tries to perpetuate the conditions which demand his leadership. Thus, the leader requires the outsider. I caution you to examine my career with care. I am both leader and outsider. Do not make the mistake of assuming that I only created the Church which was the State. That was my function as leader and I had many historical models to use as pattern. For a clue to my role as outsider, look at the arts of my time. The arts are barbaric. The favorite poetry? The Epic. The popular dramatic ideal? Heroism. Dances? Wildly abandoned. From Moneo’s viewpoint, he is correct in describing this as dangerous. It stimulates the imagination. It makes people feel the lack of that which I have taken from them. What did I take from them? The right to participate in history. —THE STOLEN JOURNALS

“Most believe that a satisfactory future requires a return to an idealized past, a past which never in fact existed.”

Think of it as plastic memory, this force within you which trends you and your fellows toward tribal forms. This plastic memory seeks to return to its ancient shape, the tribal society. It is all around you—the feudatory, the diocese, the corporation, the platoon, the sports club, the dance troupes, the rebel cell, the planning council, the prayer group . . . each with its master and servants, its host and parasites. And the swarms of alienating devices (including these very words!) tend eventually to be enlisted in the argument for a return to “those better times.” I despair of teaching you other ways. You have square thoughts which resist circles. —THE STOLEN JOURNALS

“Between the superhuman and the inhuman,” he said, “I have had little space in which to be human. I thank you, gentle and lovely Hwi, for this little space.”

yeah don’t mind me weeping and shaking rn

We are not people passing this way, he thought. We are primal elements linking one piece of Time to another. And when we have passed, everything behind us will drop off into no-sound, a place like the no-room of the Ixians, yet never again the same as it was before we came.

“These Fremen do not know what is lost from their lives. They think they keep the essence of the old ways. This is a failure of all museums. Something fades; it dries out of the exhibits and is gone. The people who administer the museum and the people who come to bend over the cases and stare—few of them sense this missing thing. It drove the engine of life in earlier times. When the life is gone, it is gone.”

“I give you a new kind of time without parallels,” he said. “It will always diverge. There will be no concurrent points on its curves. I give you the Golden Path. That is my gift. Never again will you have the kinds of concurrence that once you had.”

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