Heretics of Dune (Dune, #5)

by Frank Herbert

The Sisterhood’s analysts knew the roots of love. They had examined this quite early in their development but had never dared breed it out of those they influenced. Tolerate love but guard against it, that was the rule. Know that it lay deep within the human genetic makeup, a safety net to insure continuation of the species.

“Love leads to misery. Love is a very ancient force, which served its purpose in its day but no longer is essential for the survival of the species. Remember that woman’s mistake, the pain.”

Humans live best when each has his place to stand, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things and what he may achieve. Destroy the place and you destroy the person. —BENE GESSERIT TEACHING

It was never a question of justice. Justice required resort to law and that could be a fickle mistress, subject always to the whims and prejudices of those who administered the laws. No, it was a question of fairness, a concept that went much deeper.

Curiosity unsatisfied tended to create its own answers. Guesses were often more dangerous than facts.

Climbing from that cesspool, the population had employed only the basest pragmatism. If it works, it is good. Wealth.

“One must always observe the niceties,” Teg said. “Otherwise we are less than human.”

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.

Teg breathed deeply. Dependencies and key logs! He felt the Mentat sense of an enormous pattern just beyond the reach of his accumulated data.

Life cannot find reasons to sustain it, cannot be a source of decent mutual regard, unless each of us resolves to breathe such qualities into it.

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?

“I don’t think it’s quite that simple. 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.”

“But cling to your doubts anyway. Doubt is necessary to a philosopher.” “So the Zensunni assure us.” “All mystics agree on it, Miles. Never underestimate the power of doubts. Very persuasive. S’tori holds up doubt and surety in a single hand.”

“Exactly. If you possessed such fore-knowledge, your life would become an unutterable bore.” “You think Muad’Dib’s life was a bore?” “And the Tyrant’s, too. We think their entire lives were devoted to trying to break out of chains they themselves created.”

“Remember your philosopher’s doubts, Miles. Beware! The mind of the believer stagnates. It fails to grow outward into an unlimited, infinite universe.”

By your belief in granular singularities, you deny all movement—evolutionary or devolutionary. Belief fixes a granular universe and causes that universe to persist. Nothing can be allowed to change because that way your non-moving universe vanishes. But it moves of itself when you do not move. It evolves beyond you and is no longer accessible to you.

The basic rule is this: Never support weakness; always support strength. —THE BENE GESSERIT CODA

Without absolute monarchs patterned after the Old Gods and ruling by the grace of a belief in religious indulgence, Liberty and Freedom would never have gained their present meaning. These ideals owe their very existence to past examples of oppression. And the forces that maintain such ideas will erode unless renewed by dramatic teaching or new oppressions. This is the most basic key to my life.

Logic could move just as blindly as any other faculty.

The code itself, as he recognized its shape in him, attracted Teg’s fascinated attention. It began with recognition that humans were not created equal, that they possessed different inherited abilities and experienced different events in their lives. This produced people of different accomplishments and different worth.

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.

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?

Teg’s Mentat teachers had always assured him there was a form of living-truth not susceptible to proof by the marshaling of ordinary facts. It was carried sometimes in fables and poetry and often went contrary to desires, so he had been told. “The most difficult experience for a Mentat to accept,” they said.

“Never underestimate the power of an idea,” Taraza said. “The Atreides were ever philosophers in their governance. Philosophy is always dangerous because it promotes the creation of new ideas.”