Heretics of Dune (Dune, #5)

by Frank Herbert

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

Humans have such a powerful need that their own belief structure be the ‘true belief.’ If it gives you pleasure or a sense of security and if it is incorporated into your belief structure, what a powerful dependency that creates!”

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?

The mind of the believer stagnates. It fails to grow outward into an unlimited, infinite universe.”

Quite naturally, holders of power wish to suppress wild research. Unrestricted questing after knowledge has a long history of producing unwanted competition. The powerful want a “safe line of investigations,” which will develop only those products and ideas that can be controlled and, most important, that will allow the larger part of the benefits to be captured by inside investors. Unfortunately, a random universe full of relative variables does not insure such a “safe line of investigations.”