Chapterhouse: Dune

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Chapterhouse: Dune

Highlights

“Enclosures of any kind are a fertile breeding ground for hatred of outsiders,” she said. “That produces a bitter harvest.” — p. 25

Built into his machine, she thought. That said something about the way humans were fitted to the things they did. Lucilla sensed a weakening force in this thought. If you fitted yourself too tightly to one thing, other abilities atrophied. We become what we do. — p. 42

Life was always a reaction to pressures. Some gave in to easy distractions and were shaped by them: pores bloated and reddened by excesses. Bacchus leering at them. Lust fixing its shape on their features. A Reverend Mother knew it by millennial observation. We are shaped by pressures whether we resist them or not. Pressures and shapings—that was life. And I create new pressures by my secret defiance. — p. 55

Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your own life. The object can be stated this way: 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. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck. — p. 56

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted. — p. 69

“That is why we accepted him,” she said. “He did not play by our rules but he played for our goal.” — p. 105

“Educational bureaucracies dull a child’s questing sensitivity.” Odrade explaining. “The young must be damped down. Never let them know how good they can be. That brings change. Spend lots of committee time talking about how to deal with exceptional students. Don’t spend any time dealing with how the conventional teacher feels threatened by emerging talents and squelches them because of a deep-seated desire to feel superior and safe in a safe environment.” — p. 135

Delegate heavily to only the same people and you fell into bureaucracy. — p. 141

Coda memo to Archives. (Let Bell sweat this one!) “We should grant power over our affairs only to those who are reluctant to hold it and then only under conditions that increase the reluctance.” — p. 161

“Isn’t it odd, Dama …” No reaction; continue. “… how rebels all too soon fall into old patterns if they are victorious? It’s not so much a pitfall in the path of all governments as it is a delusion waiting for anyone who gains power.” “Hah! And I thought you would tell me something new. We know that one: ‘Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.’” “Wrong, Dama. Something more subtle but far more pervasive : Power attracts the corruptible.” — p. 180

You might remember it was the Bashar who said: “The ferocity we display to our foes is always tempered by the lesson we hope to teach.” — p. 201

Be warned. Understand nothing. All comprehension is temporary. — p. 209

Give me the judgment of balanced minds in preference to laws every time. Codes and manuals create patterned behavior. All patterned behavior tends to go unquestioned, gathering destructive momentum. — p. 277

“The difference between sentiment and sentimentality is easy to see. When. you avoid killing somebody’s pet on the glazeway, that’s sentiment. If you swerve to avoid the pet and that causes you to kill pedestrians, that is sentimentality.” — p. 309

“The Tyrant knew,” Teg said. “Duncan quotes him: ‘War is behavior with roots in the single cell of the primeval seas. Eat whatever you touch or it will eat you.’” — p. 363

“The victors bred. We are their descendants. Victory often was gained at great moral price. Barbarism is not even an adequate word for some of the things our ancestors did.” — p. 390

Here were essentials Mentats employed: patterns, movements of currents and what those currents carried, where they were going. Consequences. Not maps but the flowings. — p. 408

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty. — p. 408

“These are typical questions, Suipol: Who gets the credit? Who will be blamed if it causes problems? Will it shift the power structure, costing us jobs? Or will it make some subsidiary department more important?” Suipol nodded on cue but her glance at the comeyes might have been a little obvious. No matter. “These are political questions,” Odrade said. “They demonstrate how motives of bureaucracy are directly opposed to the need for adapting to change. Adaptability is a prime requirement for life to survive.” — p. 426

Battle must be conducted to bring out the best in those who survived. Most difficult and sometimes all but impossible. The more remote the soldier from carnage, the more difficult. It was one reason Teg always tried to move to the battle scene and examine it personally. If you did not see the pain, you could easily cause greater pain without second thoughts. — p. 467