COLLECTED SAYINGS OF THE "DUNE CHRONICLES"

PAUL ATREIDES

There exists no separation between gods and men; one blends softly casual
to the other.
Proverbs of Muad'Dib
Dune Messiah 11

Once more the drama begins.
The Emperor Paul Muad'Dib on his ascension to the Lion Throne
Dune Messiah 85

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.
Order in Council
The Emperor Paul Muad'Dib
Dune 223

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."
Addenda to Orders in Council
The Emperor Paul Muad'Dib
Dune Messiah 237

The Fremen must return to his original faith, to his genius in forming
human communities; he must return to the past, where that lesson of
survival was learned in the struggle for Arrakis. The only business of the
Fremen should be that of opening his soul to the inner teachings. The
worlds of the Imperium, the Landsraad and the CHOAM Confederacy have no
message to give him. They will only rob him of his soul.
The Preacher at Arrakeen
Children of Dune 20

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.
The Apocrypha of Muad'Dib
Children of Dune 102

I will not argue with the Fremen claims that they are divinely inspired to
transmit a religious revelation. It is their concurrent claim to
ideological revelation which inspires me to shower them with derision. Of
course, they make the dual claim in the hope that it will strengthen their
mandarinate and help them to endure in a universe which finds them
increasingly oppressive. It is in the name of all those oppressed people
that i warn the Fremen: short-term expediency always fails in the long
term.
The Preacher at Arrakeen
Children of Dune 110

This is the fallacy of power: ultimately it is effective only in an
absolute, a limited universe. But the basic lesson of our relativistic
universe is that things change. Any power must always meet a greater power.
Paul Muad'Dib taught this lesson to the Sardaukar on the Plains of
Arrakeen. His descendants have yet to learn the lesson for themselves.
The Preacher at Arrakeen
Children of Dune 154

You Bene Gesserit call your activity of the Panoplia Prophetica a "Science
of Religion." Very well. I, a seeker after another kind of scientist, find
this an appropriate definition. You do, indeed, build your own myths, but
so do all societies. You I must warn, however. You are behaving as so many
other misguided scientists have behaved. Your actions reveal that you wish
to take something out of [away from] life. It is time you were reminded of
that which you so often profess: One cannot have a single thing without its
opposite.
The Preacher at Arrakeen:
A Message to the Sisterhood
Children of Dune 171

The universe is just there; that's the only way a Fedaykin can view it and
remain the master of his senses. The universe neither threatens nor
promises. It holds things beyond our sway: the fall of a meteor, the
eruption of a spiceblow, growing old and dying. These are the realities of
this universe and they must be faced regardless of how you feel about them.
You cannot fend off such realities with words. They will come at you in
their own wordless way and then, then you will So understand what is meant
by "life and death." Understanding this, you will be filled with joy.
Muad'Dib to his Fedaykin
Children of Dune 179

O Paul, thou Muad'Dib,
Mahdi of all men,
Thy breath exhaled
Sent forth the huricen.
Songs of Muad'Dib
Children of Dune 259

Humankind periodically goes through a speedup of its affairs, thereby
experiencing the race between the renewable vitality of the living and the
beckoning vitiation of decadence. In this periodic race, any pause becomes
luxury. Only then can one reflect that all is permitted; all is possible.
The Apocrypha of Muad'Dib
Children of Dune 276

What you of the CHOAM directorate seem unable to understand is that you
seldom find real loyalties in the 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.
A letter to CHOAM Attributed to the Preacher
Children of Dune 306

ALIA ATREIDES

The Fremen see her as the Earth Figure, a demi-goddess whose special charge
is to protect the tribes through her powers of violence. She is Reverend
Mother to their Reverend Mothers. To pilgrims who seeks her out with
demands that she restore virility or make the barren fruitful, she is a
form of antimentat. She feeds on that proof that the "analytic" has limits.
She represents ultimate tension. She is the virgin-harlot -- witty, vulgar,
cruel, as destructive in her whims as a coriolis storm.
St. Alia of the Knife
as taken from The Irulan Report
Dune Messiah 109

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 one 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.
The Ghola Speaks
Alia's Commentary
Dune Messiah 157

STILGAR , FREMEN NAIB

The advent of the Field Process shield and the lasgun with their deadly
explosive interaction, deadly to attacker and attacked, placed the current
determinatives on weapons technology. We need not go into the special role
of atomics. The fact that any Family in my Empire could so deploy its
atomics as to destroy the planetary bases of fifty or more other Families
causes some nervousness, true. But all of us possess precautionary plans
for devastating retaliation. Guild and Landsraad contain the keys which
hold this force in check. No, my concern goes to the development of humans
as special weapons. Here is a virtually unlimited field which a few powers
are developing.
Muad'Dib: Lecture to the War College
from the Stilgar Chronicle
Dune Messiah 49

You do not beg the sun for mercy.
Muad'Dib's Travail
from the Stilgar Commentary
Dune Messiah 167

There exists a limit to the force even the most powerful may apply without
destroying themselves. Judging this limit is the true artistry of
government. Misuse of power is the fatal sin. The law cannot be a tool of
vengeance, never a hostage, nor a fortification against the martyrs it has
created. You cannot threaten any individual and escape the consequences.
Muad'Dib on Law
The Stilgar Commentary
Dune Messiah 289

A Fremen dies when he is too long from the desert; this we call "the water
sickness."
Stilgar, the Commentaries
Children of Dune 123

It is said of Muad'Dib that once when he saw a weed trying to grow between
two rocks, he moved one of the rocks, he moved one of the rocks. Later,
when the weed was seen to be flourishing, he covered it with the remaining
rock. "That was its fate," he explained.
The Commentaries
Children of Dune 183

I saw his blood and a piece of his robe which had been ripped by sharp
claws. His sister reports vividly of the tigers, the sureness of their
attack. We have questioned one of the plotters, and others are dead or in
custody. Everything points to a Corrino plot. A Truthsayer has attested to
this testimony.
Stilgar's Report to the Landsraad Commission
Children of Dune 216

DUNCAN IDAHO

I've had a bellyful of the god and priest business! You think U don't see
my own mythos? Consult your data once more, Hayt. I've insinuated my rites
into the most elementary human acts. The people eat in the name of
Muad'Dib! They make love in my name, are born in my name -- cross the
street in my name. A roof beam cannot be raised in the lowliest hovel of
far Gangishree without invoking the blessing of Muad'Dib?
Book of Diatribes
from The Hayt Chronicle
Dune Messiah 183

No bitter stench of funeral-still for Muad'Dib
No knell nor solemn rite to free the mind
From avaricious shadows.
He is the fool saint,
The golden stranger living forever
On the edge of reason.
Let your guard fall and he is there!
His crimson peace and sovereign pallor
Strike into our universe on prophetic webs
To the verge of a quite glance -- there!
Out of the bristling star-jungles:
Mysterious, lethal, an oracle without eyes,
Catspaw of prophecy, whose voice never dies!
Shai-Hulud, he awaits thee upon a strand
Where couples walk and fix, eye to eye,
The delicious ennui of love.
He strides through the long cavern of time,
Scattering the fool-self of his dream.
The Ghola's Hymn
Dune Messiah 331

Muad'Dib's teachings have become the playground of scholastics, of the
superstitious and the corrupt. He taught a balanced way of life, a
philosophy with which a human can meet problems arising from an
ever-changing universe. He said humankind is still evolving, in a process
which will never end. He said this evolution moves on changing principles
which are know only to eternity. How can corrupted reasoning play with such
an essence.
Words of the Mentat Duncan Idaho Children of Dune 1

I give you the desert chameleon, whose ability to blend itself into the
background tells you all you need to know about the roots of ecology and
the foundations of a personal identity.
Book of Diatribes from the Hayt Chronicle
Children of Dune 28

HARQ AL - ADA

CHALLENGE: "Have you seen The Preacher?"
RESPONSE: "I have seen a sandworm."
CHALLENGE: "What about that sandworm?"
RESPONSE: "It give us the air we breathe."
CHALLENGE: "Then why do we destroy its land?"
RESPONSE: "Because Shai-Hulud [sandworm deified] orders it."
"Riddles of Arrakis" by Harq al-Ada
Children of Dune 7

Either we abandon the long-honored Theory of Relativity, or we cease to
believe that we can engage in continued accurate prediction of the future.
Indeed, knowing the future raises a host of questions which cannot be
answered under conventional assumptions unless one first projects an
Observer outside of Time and, second, nullifies all movement. If you accept
the Theory of Relativity, it can be shown that Time and the Observer must
stand still in relationship to each or inaccuracies will intervene. This
would seem to say that it is impossible to engage in accurate prediction of
the future. How, then, do we explain the continued seeking after this
visionary goal by respected scientists? How, then, do we explain Muad'Dib?
Lectures on Prescience by Harq al-Ada
Children of Dune 49

This was Muad'Dib's achievement: He saw the subliminal reservoir of each
individual as an unconscious bank of memories going back to the primal cell
of our common genesis. Each of us, he said, can measure out his distance
from that common origin. Seeing this and telling of it, he made the
audacious leap of decision. Muad'Dib set himself the task of integrating
genetic memory into ongoing evaluation. Thus did he break through Time's
veils, making a single thing of the future and the past. That was
Muad'Dib's creation embodied in his son and his daughter.
Testament of Arrakis by Harq al-Ada
Children of Dune 82

Natural selection has been described as an environment selectively
screening for those who will have progeny. Where humans are concerned,
though, this is an extremely limiting viewpoint. Reproduction by sex tends
toward experiment and innovation. It raises many questions, including the
ancient one about whether environment is a selective agents after the
variation occurs, or whether environment plays a pre-selective role in
determining the variations which it screens. Dune did not really answer
those questions: it merely raised new questions which Leto and the
Sisterhood may attempt to answer over the next five hundred generations.
The Dune Catastrophe After Harq al-Ada
Children of Dune 284

Peace demands solutions, but we never reach living solutions; we only work
toward them. A fixed solution is, by definition, a dead solution. The
trouble with peace is that it tends to punish mistakes instead of rewarding
brilliance.
The Words of My Father: an account of Muad'Dib reconstructed by Harq al-Ada
Children of Dune 295

There exist obvious higher-order influences in any planetary system. This
is often demonstrated by introducing terraform life onto newly discovered
planets. In all such cases, the life in similar zones develops striking
similarities of adaptive form. This form signifies much more than shape; it
connects a survival organization and a relationship of such organizations.
The human quest for this interdependent order and our niche within it
represents a profound necessity. The quest can, however, be perverted into
a conservative grip on sameness. This has always proved deadly for the
entire system.
The Dune Catastrophe after Harq al-Ada
Children of Dune 304

GHANIMA ATREIDES

And he saw the vision of armor. The armor was not his own skin: it was
stronger than plasteel. Nothing penetrated his armor -- not knife or poison
or sand, not the dust of the desert or its desiccating heat. In his right
hand he carried the power to make the Coriolis storm, to shake the earth
and erode it into nothing. His eyes were fixed upon the Golden Path and in
his left hand he carried the scepter of absolute mastery. And beyond the
Golden Path, his eyes looked into eternity which he knew to be the food of
his soul and of his everlasting flesh.
Heighia, My Brother's Dream from the Book of Ghanima
Children of Dune 92

LETO II , THE GOD-EMPEROR

I hear the wind blowing across the desert and I see the moons of a winter
night rising like great ships in the void. To them I make my vow: I will be
resolute and make an art of government: I will balance my inherited past
and become a perfect storehouse of my relic memories. And I will be known
for kindliness more than for knowledge. My face will shine down the
corridors of time for as long as humans exist.
Leto's Vow After Harq al-Ada
Children of Dune 55

A sophisticated human can become primitive. What this really means is that
the human's way of life changed. Old values change, become linked to the
landscape with its plants and animals. This new existence requires a
working knowledge of those multiplex and cross-linked events usually
referred to as nature. It requires a measure of respect, for the internal
power within such natural systems. When a human gains this working
knowledge and respect, that is called "being primitive." The converse, of
course, is equally true: the primitive can become sophisticated, but not
without accepting dreadful psychological damage.
The Leto Commentary After Harq al-Ada
Children of Dune 69

The life of a single human, as the life of a family or an entire people,
persists as memory. My people must come to see this as part of their
maturing process. They are people as organism, and in this persistent
memory they store more and more experiences in a subliminal reservoir.
Humankind hopes to call upon this material if it is needed for a changing
universe. But much that is stored can be lost in that chance play of
accident which we call "fate." Much may not be integrated into evolutionary
relationships, and thus may not be evaluated and keyed into activity by
those ongoing environmental changes which inflict themselves upon flesh.
The species can forget! This is the special value of the Kwisatz Haderach
which the Bene Gesserits never suspected: the Kwisatz Haderach cannot
forget.
The Book of Leto After Harq al-Ada
Children of Dune 119

The assumption that humans exist within an essentially impermanent
universe, taken as an operational precept, demands that the intellect
become a totally aware balancing instrument. But the intellect cannot react
thus without involving the entire organism. Such an organism may be
recognized by its burning, driving behavior. And thus it is with a society
treated as organism. But here we encounter an old inertia. Societies move
to the goading of ancient, reactive impulses. They demand permanence. Any
attempt to display the universe of impermanence arouse rejection patterns,
fear, anger, and despair. Then how do we explain the acceptance of
prescience? Simply: the giver of prescient visions, because he speaks of an
absolute (permanent) realization, may be greeted with joy by humankind even
while predicting the most dire events.
The Book of Leto After Harq al-Ada
Children of Dune 137

We can still remember the golden days before Heisenberg, who showed humans
the walls enclosing our predestined arguments. The lives within me find
this amusing. Knowledge,you see, has no uses without purpose, but purpose
is what builds enclosing walls.
Leto Atreides II
His Voice
Children of Dune 241

There is no guilt or innocence in you. All of that is past. Guilt belabors
the dead and I am not the Iron Hammer. You multitude of the dead are merely
people who have done certain things, and the memory of those things
illuminates my path.
Leto II to His Memory-Lives After Harq al-Ada
Children of Dune 273

One small bird has called thee
From a beak streaked crimson.
It cried once over Sietch Tabr
And thou went forth unto Funeral Plain.
Lament for Leto II
Children of Dune 290

When I set out to lead humanity along my Golden Path I promised a lesson
their bones would remember. I know a profound pattern humans deny with
words even while their actions affirm it. They say they seek security and
quiet, conditions they call peace. Even as they speak, they create seeds of
turmoil and violence.
Leto II, the God Emperor
Chapterhouse: Dune 9

You cannot know history unless you know how leaders move with its currents.
Every leader requires outsiders to perpetuate his leadership. Examine my
career: I was leader and outsider. Do not assume I merely created a
Church-State. That was my function as leader and I followed historical
models. Barbaric arts of my time reveal me as outsider. Favorite poetry:
epics. Popular dramatic ideal: heroism. Dancers: wildly abandoned.
Stimulants to make people sense what I took from them. What did I take? The
right to choose a role in history.
Leto II, the God Emperor
Vether Bebe Translation
Chapterhouse: Dune 32

Time does not count itself. You have only to look at a circle and this is
apparent.
Leto II (The Tyrant)
Chapterhouse: Dune 191

THE SPACING GUILD

The most dangerous game in the universe is to govern from an oracular base.
We do not consider ourselves wise enough or brave enough to play that game.
The measures detailed here for regulation in lesser matters are as near as
we dare venture to the brink of government. For our purposes, we borrow a
definition from the Bene Gesserit and we consider the various worlds as
gene pools, sources of teachings and teachers, sources of the possible. Our
goal is not to rules, but to tap these gene pools, to learn, and to free
ourselves from all restraints imposed by dependency and government.
"The Orgy as a Tool of Statecraft
Chapter Three of The Steersman's Guild
Dune Messiah 123

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.
Law and Governance
The Spacing Guild Manual
Children of Dune 148

SAYINGS OF THE ZENSUFI

The person who takes the banal and ordinary and illuminates it in a new way
can terrify. We do not want our ideas changed. We feel threatened by such
demands. "I already know the important things!" we say. Then Changer comes
and throws our old ideas away.
The Zensufi Master
Chapterhouse: Dune 12

Uproot your questions from their ground and the dangling roots will be
seen. More questions!
Mentat Zensufi
Chapterhouse: Dune 220

SAYINGS OF THE ZENSUNNI

You cannot manipulate a marionette with only one string.
The Zensunni Whip
Chapterhouse: Dune 43

Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know.
Zensunni koan
Chapterhouse: Dune 361

Answers are a perilous grip on the universe. They can appear sensible yet
explain nothing.
The Zensunni Whip
Chapterhouse: Dune 369

Paired opposites define your longings and those longings imprison you.
The Zensunni Whip
Chapterhouse: Dune 431

BASHAR MILES TEG

The writing of history is largely a process of diversion. Most historical
accounts distract attention from the secret influences behind great events.
The Bashar Miles Teg
Chapterhouse: Dune 70

The true warrior often understands his enemy better than he understands his
friends. A dangerous pitfall if you let understanding lead to sympathy as
it will naturally do when left unguided.
Miles Teg
Chapterhouse: Dune 169

Ish yara al-ahdab hadbat-u. (A hunchback does not see his own hunch. --
Folk Saying.)
Bene Gesserit Commentary: The hunch may be seen with the aid of mirrors but
mirrors may show the whole being.
The Bashar Teg
Chapterhouse: Dune 308

Battle? There is always a desire for breathing space motivating it
somewhere.
The Bashar Teg
Chapterhouse: Dune 385

BENE TLEILAXU

Here lies a toppled god --
His fall was not a small one.
We did but build his pedestal,
A narrow and a tall one.
Tleilaxu Epigram
Dune Messiah 141

Every civilization must contend with an unconscious force which can block,
betray or countermand almost any conscious intention of the collectivity.
Tleilaxu Theorem (unproven)
Dune Messiah 31

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.
from the Tleilaxu Godbuk
Dune Messiah 209

Corruption wears infinite disguises.
Tleilaxu Thu-zen
Chapterhouse: Dune 83

When are the witches to be trusted? Never! The dark side of the magic
universe belongs to the Bene Gesserit and we must reject them.
Tylwyth Waff
Master of Masters
Chapterhouse: Dune 337

What do Holy Accidents teach? Be resilient. Be strong. Be ready for change,
for the new. Gather many experiences and judge them by the steadfast nature
of our faith.
Tleilaxu Doctrine
Chapterhouse: Dune 413

MENTAT SAYINGS

Above all else, the mentat must be a generalist, not a specialist. It is
wise to have decisions of great moment monitored by generalists. Experts
and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless
nit-picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma. The mentat-generalist, on
the other hand, should bring to decision-making a healthy common sense. He
must not cut himself off from the broad sweep of what is happening in this
universe. He must remain capable of saying: "There's no real mystery about
this at the moment. This is what we want now. It may prove wrong later, but
we'll correct that when we come to it." The mentat-generalist must
understand that anything which we can identify as our universe is merely
part of larger phenomena. But the expert looks backward; he looks into the
narrow standards of his own specialty. The generalist looks outward; he
looks for living principles, knowing full well that such principles change,
that they develop. It is to the characteristics of change itself that the
mentat-generalist must look. There can be no permanent catalogue of such
change, no handbook or manual. You must look at it with as few
preconceptions as possible, asking yourself: "Now what is this thing
doing?"
The Mentat Handbook
Children of Dune 221

You will learn the integrated communication methods as you complete the
next step in your mental education. This is a gestalten function which will
overlay data paths in your awareness, resolving complexities and masses of
input from the mentat index-catalogue techniques which you already have
mastered. Your initial problem will be the breaking tensions arising from
the divergent assembly of mentat overlay integration, you can be immersed
in the Babel Problem, which is the label we give to the omnipresent dangers
of achieving wrong combinations from accurate information.
The Mentat Handbook
Children of Dune 253

Education is no substitute for intelligence. That elusive quality is
defined only in part by puzzle-solving ability. It is in the creation of
new puzzles reflecting what your senses report that you round out the
definitions.
Mentat Text One (decto)
Chapterhouse: Dune 94

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 ignorant.
Mentat Text Two (decto)
Chapterhouse: Dune 103

Ready comprehension is often a knee-jerk response and the most dangerous
form of understanding. It blinks an opaque screen over your ability to
learn. The judgmental precedents of law function that way, littering your
path with dead ends. Be warned. Understanding nothing. All comprehension is
temporary.
Mentat Fixe (adacto)
Chapterhouse: Dune 178

Uproot your questions from their ground and the dangling roots will be
seen. More questions!
Mentat Zensufi
Chapterhouse: Dune 220

MISCELLANEOUS SAYINGS

TO THE LADY JESSICA --
May this place give you as much pleasure as it had given me. Please permit
the room to convey a lesson we learned from the same teachers: the
proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On that path
lies danger.
My kindest wishes,
MARGOT LADY FENRING
Dune 72