And good administrators?” “Oh, they depend on verbal orders. They never lie about what they’ve done if their verbal orders cause problems, and they surround themselves with people able to act wisely on the basis of verbal orders. Often, the most important piece of information is that something has gone wrong. Bad administrators hide their mistakes until it’s too late to make corrections.
I come only to ask a simple question. Is Muad’Dib’s death to be followed by the moral suicide of all men? Is that the inevitable aftermath of a Messiah?
The Duke said: “Paul, I’m doing a hateful thing, but I must.” He stood beside the portable poison snooper that had been brought into the conference room for their breakfast. The thing’s sensor arms hung limply over the table, reminding Paul of some weird insect newly dead. The Duke’s.
Much that was called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility toward life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eye of God, that knowledge without action is empty. All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax.
Paul crouched at the ready and, as he had been trained to do after first blood, called out: “Do you yield?
We know this moment of supreme power contained Failure. There can only be one answer. That completely accurate and total prediction is lethal.
He could close his eyes and recall the shouts of the crowds. So that is what they hope, he thought. And he remembered what the old Reverend Mother had said: Kwisatz Haderach. The memories touched his feelings of terrible purpose, shading this strange world.
How could he deny the jewels of posterity within his loins?
A bad administrator is more concerned with reports than with decisions. He wants the hard record which he can display as an excuse for his errors.
As you well know, the secret of community lies in suppression of the incompatible.
Do not make the error of considering my son a child,” the Duke said. And he smiled.
Then she said a good ruler has to learn his world’s language, that it’s different for every world. And I thought she meant they didn’t speak Galach on Arrakis, but she said that wasn’t it at all. She said she meant the language of the rocks and growing things, the language you don’t hear just with your ears.
How sure it is, Leto thought, that a weapon can lock a person into a predictable pattern of behavior.
Paul sat silently in the darkness, a single stark thought dominating his awareness: My mother is my enemy. She does not know it, but she is. She is bringing the jihad. She bore me; she trained me. She is my enemy.
Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over any future. Scratch a liberal and find a closet aristocrat.
Every judgment teeters on the brink of error.
You should fear me, Mother. I am the Kwisatz Haderach.” Jessica.
You shall be known among us as Usul, the base of the pillar. This is your secret name, your troop name. We of Sietch.
You never talk of likelihoods on Arrakis. You speak only of possibilities.
There is a fundamental tension between science and freedom – no matter how science is viewed by its practitioners nor how freedom is sensed by those who believe they have it.