Heretics of Dune

The surest way to keep a secret is to make someone think they already know the answer.

Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept?

This is the awe-inspiring universe of magic: There are no atoms, only waves and motions all around. Here, you discard all belief in barriers to understanding. You put aside understanding itself. This universe cannot be seen, cannot be heard, cannot be detected in any way by fixed perceptions. It is the ultimate void where no preordained screens occur upon which forms may be projected. You have only one awareness here—the screen of the magi: Imagination! Here, you learn what it is to be human. You are a creator of order, of beautiful shapes and systems, an organizer of chaos.

I don’t think it’s quite that simple. Some people never observe anything, Life just happens to them. They get by on little more than a kind of dumb persistence, and they resist with anger and resentment anything that might lift them out of that false serenity.

Technology tends toward avoidance of risks by investors. Uncertainty is ruled out if possible. People generally prefer the predictable. Few recognize how destructive this can be, how it imposes severe limits on variability and thus makes whole populations fatally vulnerable to the shocking ways our universe can throw the dice.

There was a man who sat each day looking out through a narrow vertical opening where a single board had been removed from a tall wooden fence. Each day a wild ass of the desert passed outside the fence and across the narrow opening—first the nose, then the head, the forelegs, the long brown back, the hindlegs, and lastly the tail. One day, the man leaped to his feet with the light of discovery in his eyes and he shouted for all who could hear him: “It is obvious! The nose causes the tail!

Belief fixes a granular universe and causes that universe to persist. Nothing can be allowed to change because that way your non-moving universe vanishes. But it moves of itself when you do not. It evolves beyond you and is no longer accessible to you.

Duncan spoke quietly: 'Lucilla, if you touch me again without my permission, I will try to kill you. I will try so hard that you very likely will have to kill me.

A sing-song of shouts filled the air as the merchants tried to attract buyers. Their voices had that end of the workday lift - a false brilliance composed of the hope that old dreams would be fulfilled, yet coloured by the knowledge that life would not change for them.

People always want something more than immediate joy or that deeper sense called happiness. This is one of the secrets by which we shape the fulfillment of our designs. The something more assumes amplified power with people who cannot give it a name or who (most often the case) do not even suspect its existence. Most people only react unconsciously to such hidden forces. Thus, we have only to call a calculated something more into existence, define it and give it shape, then people will follow.

Remember your philosopher’s doubts, Miles. Beware! The mind of the believer stagnates. It fails to grow outward into an unlimited, infinite universe.

She used these moments as she used all such time now to gird herself for the coming necessities. Time pressed; a special calendar drove her. She had looked at a calendar before leaving Chapter House, caught as often happened to her by the persistence of time and its language: seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years. . . Standard Years, to be precise. Persistence was an inadequate word for the phenomenon. Inviolability was more like it. Tradition. Never disturb tradition. She held the comparisons firmly in mind, the ancient flow of time imposed on planets that did not tick to the primitive human clock. A week was seven days. Seven! How powerful that number remained. Mystical. It was enshrined in the Orange Catholic Bible. The Lord made a world in six days “and on the seventh day He rested.” Good for Him! Odrade thought. We all should rest after great labors.

Taraza cleared her throat. “No need. Lucilla is one of our finest Imprinters. Each of you, of course, received the identical liberal conditioning to prepare you for this.” There was something almost insulting in Taraza’s casual tone and only the habits of long association put down Odrade’s immediate resentment. It was partly that word “liberal,” she realized. Atreides ancestors rose up in rebellion at the word. It was as though her accumulated female memories lashed out at the unconscious assumptions and unexamined prejudices behind the concept. “Only liberals really think. Only liberals are intellectual. Only liberals understand the needs of their fellows.” How much viciousness lay concealed in that word! Odrade thought. How much secret ego demanding to feel superior.

The people who demand that the oracle predict for them really want to know next year’s price on whalefur or something equally mundane. None of them wants an instant-by-instant prediction of his personal life.

The great mass of humankind possesses an unmistakable unit-identity. It can be one thing. It can act as a single organism.

Law always chooses sides on the basis of enforcement power. Morality and legal niceties have little to do with it when the real question is: Who has the clout? —Bene

They learned early that sharing secret or private names was an ancient device for ensnaring a person in affections.

Sjećanje nikada ne obnavlja stvarnost. Ono je samo preuređuje. Sva ta preuređenja mijenjaju original, postajući na taj način vanjski okviri za preporuke koje neizbježno brzo propadaju.

Sasvim sigurno, vlastodršci žele spriječiti "divlja" istraživanja. Nesputano traganje za znanjem bilježi dugu povijest stvaranja nepoželjne konkurencije. Moćnici žele "sigurnu liniju istraživanja" koja će razviti samo one proizvode i ideje koje oni mogu nadzirati i, što je najvažnije, koje će omogućiti da veći dio dobiti pripadne unutrašnjim ulagačima. Na nesreću, proizvoljan svemir pun relativnih promjenjivosti ne omogućuje neku takvu "sigurnu liniju istraživanja".

Ljudi koji u proročanstvu traže budućnost zapravo žele znati kakva će biti cijena kitovog krzna iduće godine ili nešto slično banalno. Nitko stvarno ne želi imati život predvidiv u svakom trenutku.

Neki ljudi nikad ništa ne zapaze. Život im se tek događa. Provedu ga u nečemu što je tek malo više od neke vrste tupog trajanja, te srdito i ozlojeđeno odbijaju sve što bi ih moglo izvesti iz tog lažnog spokojstva.

Na kvantnoj razini, naš svemir se može vidjeti kao neodredivo mjesto, predvidivo na statistički način jedino uz primjenu dovoljno velikih brojeva. Između tog svemira i nekog razmjerno predvidivog u kojem se prolaz nekog planeta može vremenski odrediti unutar pikosekunde, u igru ulaze druge sile. U srednjem svemiru, u kojem svakodnevno živimo, glavna sila je ono u što vjerujete. Vaša vjerovanja određuju odvijanje dnevnih događaja. Vjeruje li nas dovoljno u nešto, možemo to učiniti postojećim. Uređenje vjerovanja stvara filtar kojim se kaos prosijava u red.

Za razumijevanje su potrebne riječi. No neke stvari se ne mogu svesti na riječi. A neke druge stvari se mogu doživjeti samo bez riječi.

Ljudi najbolje žive kad svatko ima svoje mjesto, kad svatko zna kamo spada u shemi sustava i što može postići. Uništi to mjesto i uništio si osobu.