Heretics of Dune (Dune, #5)

by Frank Herbert

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 in susceptible types. Warfare of these kinds will dump the destroyed survivors back into an innocent population that is incapable of even imagining what such returned soldiers might do.

Technology, in common with many other activities, tends toward avoidance of risks by investors. Uncertainty is ruled out if possible. Capital investment follows this rule, since people generally prefer the predictable. Few recognize how destructive this can be, how it imposes severe limits on variability and thus makes whole populations fatally vulnerable to the shocking ways our universe can throw the dice.

If enough of us believe, a new thing can be made to exist. Belief structure creates a filter through which chaos is sifted into order.

Law always chooses sides on the basis of enforcement power. Morality and legal niceties have little to do with it when the real question is: Who has the clout?

Some people never observe anything. Life just happens to them. They get by on little more than a kind of dumb persistence, and they resist with anger and resentment anything that might lift them out of that false serenity.”

“What one cannot control one must accept,”

violence builds its own limits.

The Scattering was wild and random movement interpreted as growth (expansion). It was goaded by a profound fear (often unconscious) of stagnation and death.

We will worship you, God, but don’t bother us. This is our religion, our city. You see, we no longer call this place Arrakeen. Now, it’s Keen. The planet no longer is Dune or Arrakis. Now, it’s Rakis. Keep your distance, God. You are the past and the past is an embarrassment.

As she had often done, Odrade thought of herself now as an archeologist, not one who sifted the dusty detritus of the ages but rather a person who focused where the Sisterhood frequently concentrated its awareness: on the ways people carried their past within them.

Tuek felt like a ball in a fearsome game, bounced back and forth between terrifying energies.

Peaceful Rakis, the secure place of his daily routines, had vanished and he had been projected into an arena whose rules he did not fully understand.

Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept?

Alternative interpretations must always receive our attention.

Sex for pleasure, the enemy of religion, eh?”

“Memories are not enough unless they call you to noble purpose!”

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.

“They built to make people feel small,”

Finally, a door would open into a place you recognized. Then you could say: “Ahhhh, this explains everything.”

Concealed behind strong barriers the heart becomes ice.

When strangers meet, great allowance should be made for differences of custom and training.

The least favorable condition controls the rate of growth.

“They must not be improved! Oh, we see to it that self-improvement remains a great fad among them. Nothing real about it, of course.”

Teg took some reassurance from the realization that neither of these two really enjoyed life.