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Albertus had entered that fully revelatory phase where fear gripped his scrotum.
The believer was a receptacle for her to feed with the sweets of the Missionaria Protectiva.
All organized religions face a common problem, a tender spot through which we may enter and shift them to our designs: How do they distinguish hubris from revelation?
Odrade had never before focused on how easily the Missionaria Protectiva’s teachings destroyed human independence. That was always the goal, of course: Make them followers, obedient to our needs.
“Survival, Dar! That’s all the noble purpose we need. Survival! Even the Tyrant knew that!”
The new Rakians spoke of the need “to keep up with the times.” They meant: “Give us more power!”
She spoke the proper words, but what lay behind such words? They no longer sounded right coming from the mouth of a powindah woman.
Odrade decided on a creative truth.
“When only one person knows a dangerous thing, how easy it is to gain that person’s eternal silence.”
“Will you also help spread this . . . this Atreides Manifesto?” “Why not? I wrote it.”
Sex for pleasure, the enemy of religion, eh?”
Some of the old religions can still produce wisdom.
It all appeared so haphazard and casual, yet there was harsh order in it. And that, Taraza knew, personified the Sisterhood.
She is too fat! She flaunts that before us!
Melancholy could be quite as mind-clouding as affection . . . or even love.
She was forced to confront the fact that one day she would be no more than a set of memories in someone else’s living flesh.
Always after these bouts of melancholy she regained an even firmer grip on her life and its purposes.
Odrade had clearly recognized on several occasions what sat at the core of the Mother Superior’s behavior. A giant howl of rage against the uses others had made of her life. The power of that suppressed rage was daunting even though it could never be expressed in a way that vented it. That rage must never be allowed to heal. How it hurt! Odrade’s awareness made the pain even more intense.
Love was one of the most dangerous forces in the universe. They had to protect themselves against it.
All of those various hungers that flesh can sense and hope to satisfy. What else could possibly matter?
She could be killed but she could not be defeated.
“They have surpassed the sexual skills of our Imprinters.” “Whores!”
You gave them a hold on us . . . and us a hold on them—and neither of us dares let go.” “Is that not the perfect alliance?”
“Your candor is appreciated but I warn you to be careful in your use of it,”
“Who could believe stupid people would do such a thing?”
“Act stupid long enough and you become stupid,”
Historians exercise great power and some of them know it. They re-create the past, changing it to fit their own interpretations. Thus, they change the future as well.
Their world became progressively a smaller place as it lost its connection with a larger universe.
“They built to make people feel small,”
“When you traverse such country as this you become one of the animals that live here.
“They trust their machines and the motions they see. They are lazy.
Sometime during the night’s passage, Duncan realized, he had begun to accept his place in the schemes of others. A new patience was taking over his awareness.
“I was wondering if I knew you,” Teg said. “No one here knows anyone else,” the man said. “Eat your soup.”
A steadying hand gripped Teg’s wrist and the artificial voice spoke softly in Teg’s ear: “I do not know what they did to you, Bashar, but no one will harm you here without crossing my dead body.” “You know me?” “Many would die for you, Bashar. My son lives because of you.”
Time had not stopped here, it had retreated.
Teg saw suddenly that this place was a lie plastered over with other lies, based on previous lies, and such a mad mixup that they might never dig through to a usable truth.
Their voices had that end of the workday lift—a false brilliance composed of the hope that old dreams would be fulfilled, yet colored by the knowledge that life would not change for them. It occurred to Lucilla that the people of these streets pursued a fleeting dream, that the fulfillment they sought was not the thing itself but a myth they had been conditioned to seek the way racing animals were trained to chase after the whirling bait on the endless oval of the racetrack.
Silence. It was a new kind of silence in her experience, a crouching preparation for flight or violence.
They were too dangerous. Yet their value was incalculable.
He was a cornered animal. Such animals were dangerous in the extreme.
The tropism of common thoughts.
“You said I must give myself to your direction in all things, holding back nothing, disobeying you in nothing.” “And you said: ‘Is that all?’”
When strangers meet, great allowance should be made for differences of custom and training.
“This was a factory in the old days,” Burzmali said. “I have eyes and a memory,” Lucilla snapped. Did this grunting male think her completely devoid of intelligence?
“We will eat now,” the Duke said. It was a royal command saved from arrogance by a faint grin that said: “Somebody had to say it.”
She is old! Teg had not expected her to be this ancient. Her face was a wrinkled mask. The eyes were deeply set green ice. Her nose was an elongated beak whose shadow touched thin lips and repeated the sharp angle of the chin. A black skullcap almost covered her gray hair.
“There are always means of transferring large sums or selling power,” she said. “I do not speak of the power that runs factories but of the power that runs people.” “And that usually passes under the strange names of government or society or civilization,” Teg said.
“Like all the others we control, Bashar, you have a choice: death or obedience.” “That is a rather old choice,”
Teg designed a smile for them, using all of the skills he had learned at Bene Gesserit hands. It was a smile full of compassion, of understanding and real pleasure in his own existence. He knew it for the most deadly insult he could hurl at them and he saw it hit.
