- Children of Dune by Frank Herbert.
- Read: February 8th, 2024 – March 2nd, 2024.
- Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5)
I was not really expecting the history to go this way 😅.
Highlights
These are illusions of popular history which a successful religion must promote: Evil men never prosper; only the brave deserve the fair; honesty is the best policy; actions speak louder than words; virtue always triumphs; a good deed is its own reward; any bad human can be reformed; religious talismans protect one from demon possession; only females understand the ancient mysteries; the rich are doomed to unhappiness… — p. 1,091 (Dune Saga Collection)
“Power attracts the psychotics. Always. That’s what we have to avoid within ourselves.” — p. 1,109 (Dune Saga Collection)
“I speak the popular myth of prescience: to know the future absolutely! All of it! What fortunes could be made—and lost—on such absolute knowledge, eh? The rabble believes this. They believe that if a little bit is good, more must be better. How excellent! And if you handed one of them the complete scenario of his life, the unvarying dialogue up to his moment of death—what a hellish gift that’d be. What utter boredom! Every living instant he’d be replaying what he knew absolutely. No deviation. He could anticipate every response, every utterance—over and over and over and over and over and…” Leto shook his head. “Ignorance has its advantages. A universe of surprises is what I pray for!” — p. 1,124 (Dune Saga Collection)
Atrocity is recognized as such by victim and perpetrator alike, by all who learn about it at whatever remove. Atrocity has no excuses, no mitigating argument. Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. It is self-perpetuating upon itself—a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred. — p. 1,133 (Dune Saga Collection)
“Once your father confided in me that knowing the future too well was to be locked into that future to the exclusion of any freedom to change.” — p. 1,145 (Dune Saga Collection)
“A ruler need not be a prophet, Stil. Nor even godlike. A ruler need only be sensitive.” — p. 1,146 (Dune Saga Collection)
His planetary governors on Arrakis had cultivated a persistent pessimism to bolster their power base. They’d made sure that everyone on Arrakis, even the free-roaming Fremen, became familiar with numerous cases of injustice and insoluble problems; they had been taught to think of themselves as a helpless people for whom there was no succor. — p. 1,154 (Dune Saga Collection)
Good government never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders. — p. 1,185 (Dune Saga Collection)
“If you put away those who report accurately, you’ll keep only those who know what you want to hear,” Jessica said, her voice sweet. “I can think of nothing more poisonous than to rot in the stink of your own reflections.” — p. 1,196 (Dune Saga Collection)
“Alia grasps the power firmly now.” She looked back at Idaho. “You understand? One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp too strongly is to be taken over by power, and thus to become its victim.” — p. 1,217 (Dune Saga Collection)
He was a mind-slaver and his enslaving process could be understood with extreme simplicity: he transferred technical knowledge without a transfer of values. — p. 1,243 (Dune Saga Collection)
“Abandon certainty! That’s life’s deepest command. That’s what life’s all about. We’re a probe into the unknown, into the uncertain. Why can’t you hear Muad’Dib? If certainty is knowing absolutely an absolute future, then that’s only death disguised! Such a future becomes now! He showed you this!” — p. 1,274 (Dune Saga Collection)
The one-eyed view of our universe says you must not look far afield for problems. Such problems may never arrive. Instead, tend to the wolf within your fences. The packs ranging outside may not even exist. — p. 1,276 (Dune Saga Collection)
“There’s unknown all around at every moment. That’s where you seek knowledge.” — p. 1,285 (Dune Saga Collection)
Because of the one-pointed Time awareness in which the conventional mind remains immersed, humans tend to think of everything in a sequential, word-oriented framework. This mental trap produces very short-term concepts of effectiveness and consequences, a condition of constant, unplanned response to crises. — p. 1,300 (Dune Saga Collection)
“The malady of indifference is what destroys many things,” Leto said. He nodded to himself. “Yes . . . even civilizations die of it. It’s as though that were the price demanded for achieving new levels of complexity or consciousness.” — p. 1,310 (Dune Saga Collection)
“Every judgment teeters on the brink of error,” Leto explained. “To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.” — p. 1,322 (Dune Saga Collection)
“Irreverence is a most necessary ingredient of religion,” Leto said. “Not to speak of its importance in philosophy. Irreverence is the only way left to us for testing our universe.” — p. 1,323 (Dune Saga Collection)
What you of the CHOAM directorate seem unable to understand is that you seldom find real loyalties in commerce. When did you last hear of a clerk giving his life for the company? Perhaps your deficiency rests in the false assumption that you can order men to think and cooperate. This has been a failure of everything from religions to general staffs throughout history. General staffs have a long record of destroying their own nations. As to religions, I recommend a rereading of Thomas Aquinas. As to you of CHOAM, what nonsense you believe! Men must want to do things out of their own innermost drives. People, not commercial organizations or chains of command, are what make great civilizations work. Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness—they cannot work and their civilization collapses. — p. 1,362 (Dune Saga Collection)
The spirit of Muad’Dib is more than words, more than the letter of the Law which arises in his name. Muad’Dib must always be that inner outrage against the complacently powerful, against the charlatans and the dogmatic fanatics. It is that inner outrage which must have its say because Muad’Dib taught us one thing above all others: that humans can endure only in a fraternity of social justice. — p. 1,381 (Dune Saga Collection)