This moment here is the only observable time and place for us in our universe.
Leaders made mistakes. And those mistakes, amplified by the numbers who followed without questioning, moved inevitably toward great disasters.
Whirling silence settled around Jessica. Every fiber of her body accepted the fact that something profound had happened to it. She felt that she was a conscious mote, smaller than any subatomic particle, yet capable of motion and of sensing her surroundings. Like an abrupt revelation – the curtains whipped away – she realized she had become aware of a psychokinesthetic extension of herself. She was the mote, yet not the mote.
Does the prophet see the future or does he see a line of weakness, a fault or cleavage that he may shatter with words or decisions as a diamond-cutter shatters his gem with a blow of a knife? –.
My mind controls my reality.
Cynicism! That, no doubt is a greater crime than heresy.
Hittite law emphasized restitution rather than revenge. Humankind lost a certain useful practicality when it chose the other Semitic response – never to forgive and never to forget.
But, putting on a stillsuit, he put on the desert.
You must teach me the way you thrust your worries aside and turn to practical matters.
Religion began as a female monopoly, wrested from them only after its social power became too dominant. Women were the first medical researchers and practitioners. There has never been any clear balance between the sexes because power goes with certain roles as it certainly goes with knowledge.
Isn’t it odd how we misunderstand the hidden unity of kindness and cruelty?” Jessica.
Time could be made to serve the mind.
In their passion for sameness, the tyrants made themselves more and more powerful. All others grew correspondingly weaker and weaker. New bureaus and directorates, odd ministries, leaped into existence for the most improbable purposes. These became the citadels of a new aristocracy, rulers who kept the giant wheel of government careening along, spreading destruction, violence, and chaos wherever they touched.
There’s no mystery about a human life. It’s not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him.
Warfare leaves a residue of ‘eat drink and be merry’ that often leads inexorably to moral breakdown.
Can you remember your first taste of spice?” “It tasted like cinnamon.” “But never twice the same,” he said. “It’s like life – it presents a different face each time you take it. Some hold that the spice produces a learned-flavor reaction. The body, learning a thing is good for it, interprets the flavor as pleasurable – slightly euphoric. And, like life, never to be truly synthesized.
The mind can go either direction under stress – toward positive or toward negative:.
The historical system of mutual pillage and extortion stops here on Arrakis,” his father said. “You cannot go on forever stealing what you need without regard to those who come after. The physical qualities of a planet are written into its economic and political record.
But the tripod upon which Eternity swings is composed of flesh and thought and emotion.