Hunters Of Dune Quotes
"Those who would repeat the past must control the teaching of history." - Bene Gesserit Coda
"It isn't every woman who can preside at the birth of her own father."
"It felt very odd to hold that baby in my arms and think: This is my father."
"If the Honored Matres find us before we are ready perhaps it will be because we failed to keep up our morale."
"You could lose yourself for hours, fascinated by the multiplicity of human variations."
"They say they seek security and quiet, conditions they call peace. Even as they speak, they create seeds of turmoil and violence."
"The person who takes the banal and ordinary and illuminates it in a new way can terrify."
"You are a special child. We made you from cells taken from a very old man."
"Rules build up fortifications behind which small minds create satrapies."
"We tend to become like the worst in those we oppose."
"You cannot manipulate a marionette with only one string."
"Live the best life you can. Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt."
"Create or arouse such unbridled forces and you built carnal fantasies of enormous complexity."
"You are always mindful of one another. Some of us in positions of power can be authoritarian at times, familiar even, but only to a point carefully measured for the requirements of the moment."
"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible."
"Everything you do, everything you sense and say is experiment. No deduction final. Nothing stops until dead and perhaps not even then, because each life creates endless ripples."
"The farther back you go, the worse the evil atrocities and higher the price. You cannot go back that far but I am forced to it."
"There's no flaw in our first ghola, is there?"
"The writing of history is largely a process of diversion. Most historical accounts distract attention from the secret influences behind great events."
"Many things we do naturally become difficult only when we try to make them intellectual subjects. It is possible to know so much about a subject that you become totally ignorant."
"Thoughts such as these recreated her nightmare: the chasm . . . the tightrope."
"We must be purified and made ready for a supreme effort."
"Beware, Murbella! If you think you own something, that's like walking on quicksand."
"The hardest lesson for an acolyte to learn is that she must always go the limit."
"The young must be damped down. Never let them know how good they can be."
"Educational bureaucracies dull a child's questing sensitivity."
"Do actions agree with words? There's your measure of reliability."
"Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit."
"I will create order for you to follow. Here is the path."
"We do not teach history; we recreate the experience."
"People have politics. Politics: the art of appearing candid and completely open while concealing as much as possible."
"Laws must always be interpreted. The law-bound want no latitude for compassion."
"It's a rondo. It rolls and rolls until it injures the wrong person or the wrong group. Then you get anarchy. Chaos."
"Democracy is susceptible to being led astray by having scapegoats paraded in front of the electorate."
"A top-heavy bureaucracy the electorate cannot touch always expands to the system's limits of energy."
"Sincerity with nothing behind it takes so much practice."
"The technique is quite subtle but easy. You create a system where most people are dissatisfied, vaguely or deeply."
"The first rule of our democracy: no laws restricting juries."
"It's astonishing how stupid humans can be when acting in small, self-serving groups."
"Face your fears or they will climb over your back."
"Do not depend only on theory if your life is at stake."
"A major concept guides the Missionaria Protectiva: Purposeful instruction of the masses."
"The known could beleaguer her more than the unknown."
"A game where one of the pieces can't be moved."
"It was dangerous to think you could gull Reverend Mothers."
"Intimate trivia. It's the stuff all artists want."
"The touch of a hand on my arm. A child's laughing face. The glitter in an attacker's eyes."
"All had become part of him. They were bound into his character."
"They're dead, Murbella. All I can promise is that there are no jealous ghosts in my past."
"The greatest relevancy can become irrelevant in the space of a heartbeat."
"Nothing old, nothing new, nothing set in ancient adhesives, nothing truly known."
"The best art imitates life in a compelling way."
"Give me the judgment of balanced minds in preference to laws every time."
"You have to do it yourself. A very curious sensation on Dune, knowing a worm could come at any instant and consume you."
"No single child was more important than the totality."
"Uproot your questions from their ground and the dangling roots will be seen."
"Worship of Guldur will serve them as it serves us."
"Humans are born with a susceptibility to that most persistent and debilitating disease of intellect: self-deception."
"The tyranny of the minority cloaked in the mask of the majority."
"If it tastes bitter, spit it out. That's what our earliest ancestors did."
"No sweeteners will cloak some forms of bitterness. If it tastes bitter, spit it out."
"His words ignited in him a clear vision of Lady Jessica, lover of his long-dead Duke and mother of Muad'Dib."
"The look he saw now in Murbella's eyes, he had seen Jessica look at the Duke that way: blind, unswerving love."
"What's belief have to do with it? Unknowns create their own mystique."
"Is that what you want, my darling? He felt trapped."
"I love you too much, Murbella. That's my Agony."
"The Bene Gesserit is all to a Reverend Mother."
"Without conscious volition, he reached out and caressed her back. Skin so soft and yet resilient."
"Enter no conflict against fanatics unless you can defuse them."
"I think my father refused to succumb to an Honored Matre."
"War is behavior with roots in the single cell of the primeval seas."
"You are allowed a small entourage of servants, no more than five."
"They have only to recognize their own habits and they..."
"You pride yourselves on knowing what's required of you at every turn."
"We can only extract essentials, and that is a matter of judgment."
"In this age, the word 'refugees' took on the color of its pre-space meaning."
"So we repeat history and repeat it and repeat it."
"Beware jargon. It usually hides ignorance and carries little knowledge."
"Our survival should not depend on statistics!"
"Our household god is this thing we carry forward generation after generation: our message for humankind if it matures."
"Budget dictated reduced quality in many choices, endurance preferred over luxury or eye appeal."
"Compromise and, like most compromise, satisfying no one."
"The thing was tangible substance. It was here to be used now."
"Each time she entered one of these places, she had the sensation of being in a museum."
"The arrangement of reception area behind grilled slots, space for waiting with its mixture of seats and inconvenient lighting, signs directing them to services."
"Only language and script had changed from ancient times."
"A frenetic dance of roboservants in the reception area -- dartings here and there, cleaning, picking up litter, guiding newcomers."
"To her Bene Gesserit eye, the people of Ix were always recognizable no matter the disguises."
"Ixians displayed a Hogbenesque attitude toward their science: that political and economic requirements determined permissible research."
"Adaptability is a prime requirement for life to survive."
"Creative anarchy is the path to survival in this universe."
"Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know."
"Unknowns were to be feared. A good commander kept that firmly in mind."
"The target system looked ordinary from this distance: a sun and its captive planets."
"Honorable people did not misuse weapons of their feudal society."
"This was adrenaline time! Romance distracted you from necessities."
"Today is sufficient unto today, and that is how Elpek sees me."
"No bonded males here. This was too sensitive a duty for any but trusted women. Good."
"If you have any loyalty to our Sisterhood, you will honor what I have brought."
"No, we Honored Matres do not like others spying on us."