More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
There exists no separation between gods and men; one blends softly casual into the other. —PROVERBS OF MUAD’DIB
“The future is a thing to be shaped,” Scytale said. “Hold that thought, Princess.”
They’re trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.”
Admittedly, the walks were dangerous, but it was a kind of danger he could recognize and meet immediately. Something compelling and attractive surrounded walking anonymously at night in the streets of Arrakeen.
Watching the mundane activities of everyday life filled him with profound envy. Most of that nameless flowing life outside the walls of his Keep couldn’t be shared by an Emperor—but . . . to walk down a public street without attracting attention: what a privilege! To pass by the clamoring of mendicant pilgrims, to hear a Fremen curse a shopkeeper: “You have damp hands!” . . .
“One who rules assumes irrevocable responsibility for the ruled. You are a husbandman. This demands, at times, a selfless act of love which may only be amusing to those you rule.”
“If you’re angered, love, please don’t hide it.”
He felt that he had been cast adrift suddenly and now must thrash his way back to some steady place.
This glorious instant is mine! I’m free! What empty words!
To use raw power is to make yourself infinitely vulnerable to greater powers.
Was it not presumptuous, he wondered, to think he could make over an entire planet—everything growing where and how he told it to grow? Even if he succeeded, what of the universe waiting out there? Did it fear similar treatment?
“An object seen from a distance betrays only its principle,” Scytale said, revealing that he wished to discuss the Emperor’s fortress Keep. “That which is dark and evil may be seen for evil at any distance,” Farok said, advising delay.
My son told me that such eyes are metal and he is flesh, that such a union must be sinful.” “The principle of an object must fit its original intent,”
More than one government has fallen because people discovered the real extent of official wealth.
My soul had four gates and I knew them all.”
Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual.
“You don’t back people into a corner,” Alia said. “Not if you want them to remain peaceful.”
Strange, what a sense of compelling responsibility they both felt for that brawling, idolatrous universe with its ecstasies of tranquility and wild motion. Must we protect them from themselves? he wondered. They play with nothingness every moment—empty lives, empty words.
“Constitutions become the ultimate tyranny,” Paul said. “They’re organized power on such a scale as to be overwhelming. The constitution is social power mobilized and it has no conscience. It can crush the highest and the lowest, removing all dignity and individuality. It has an unstable balance point and no limitations. I, however, have limitations. In my desire to provide an ultimate protection for my people, I forbid a constitution. Order in Council, this date, etcetera, etcetera.”
What do they find here? Paul asked himself. Often in their religious ecstasy, they filled the streets with screeching like some odd aviary. In fact, the Fremen called them “passage birds.” And the few who died here were “winged souls.”
“Strong decisions,” Hayt said. “These temper a man’s life. One can take the temper from fine metal by heating it and allowing it to cool without quenching.”
His ghost stared out of metal eyes. Two beings stood side by side in this revenant flesh. One was a threat with its force and nature hidden behind unique veils.
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear . . .”
He found it odd that he could look at a person who was this close to him and no longer recognize her in the identity framework which had seemed so fixed and familiar.
To glimpse the future was to steal terrifying fire from a sacred flame. It held the attraction of ultimate peril, souls ventured and lost. One brought back from the formless, dangerous distances something with form and power.
“Destroy you, Sire?” Edric asked, all bland attention. “Can one destroy a god?”
“People always expect the worst of the rich and powerful, Sire. It is said one can always tell an aristocrat: he reveals only those of his vices which will make him popular.”
“Power tends to isolate those who hold too much of it. Eventually, they lose touch with reality . . . and fall.”
“Some say,” Scytale said, “that people cling to Imperial leadership because space is infinite. They feel lonely without a unifying symbol. For a lonely people, the Emperor is a definite place. They can turn toward him and say: ‘See, there He is. He makes us one.’ Perhaps religion serves the same purpose, m’Lord.”
“But an easy place to hide,” she said. She looked at him. “It reminds me of a human mind . . . with all its concealments.”
“Both of you were taught to govern,” he said. “You were conditioned to an overweening thirst for power. You were imbued with a shrewd grasp of politics and a deep understanding for the uses of war and ritual. Natural law? What natural law? That myth haunts human history. Haunts! It’s a ghost. It’s insubstantial, unreal. Is your Jihad a natural law?”
“I told him that to endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe.”
“And that’s why you are dangerous,” she said, measuring out her words. “You’ve mastered your passions.”
I think what a joy it is to be alive, and I wonder if I’ll ever leap inward to the root of this flesh and know myself as once I was. The root is there. Whether any act of mine can find it, that remains tangled in the future. But all things a man can do are mine. Any act of mine may do it.
“Where is there substance in a universe composed of events?” Paul asked. “Is there a final answer? Doesn’t each solution produce new questions?”
The flesh surrenders itself, he thought. Eternity takes back its own. Our bodies stirred these waters briefly, danced with a certain intoxication before the love of life and self, dealt with a few strange ideas, then submitted to the instruments of Time. What can we say of this? I occurred. I am not . . . yet, I occurred.
When a creature has developed into one thing, he will choose death rather than change into his opposite.
No machine could function in the way of a human mind. No word or deed could imply that men might be bred on the level of animals.
No matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no matter the developments of life and society nor the complexity of the machine/human interface, there always come interludes of lonely power when the course of humankind, the very future of humankind, depends upon the relatively simple actions of single individuals.
Paul studied the pilgrims around him, suddenly envious of their intentness, their air of listening to truths he could not hear. It seemed to him that they gained something here which was denied to him, something mysteriously healing.
Production growth and income growth must not get out of step in my Empire. That is the substance of my command. There are to be no balance-of-payment difficulties between the different spheres of influence. And the reason for this is simply because I command it. I want to emphasize my authority in this area. I am the supreme energy-eater of this domain, and will remain so, alive or dead. My Government is the economy.
Hope was a dervish wind whirling, dancing in Paul.
I was wrong to hope, Paul thought. But thinking of hope brought him a twisted sense of hope, and he felt that he might yet seize his moment.
“I don’t speak,” Bijaz said. “I operate a machine called language. It creaks and groans, but is mine own.”
“That’s good then,” Otheym said, taking Paul’s lowered head for a nod of agreement. “One good thing among the evils, Usul. I don’t like the world we’re making, you know that?
The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: “I feed on your energy.”
“I was baptized in sand and it cost me the knack of believing. Who trades in faiths anymore? Who’ll buy? Who’ll sell?”
Forget mystery and accept love. There’s no mystery about love. It comes from life. Can’t you feel that?”
“You can’t build politics on love,” he said. “People aren’t concerned with love; it’s too disordered. They prefer despotism. Too much freedom breeds chaos. We can’t have that, can we? And how do you make despotism lovable?”
He played a part, no more.
