Home > Work > House Atreides (Prelude to Dune #1)
61 " House Atreides claimed to trace its roots more than twelve thousand years, back to the ancient sons of Atreus on Old Terra. Now the family embraced its long history, despite the numerous tragic and dishonorable incidents it contained. The dukes had made an annual tradition of performing the classic tragedy Agamemnon, most famous son of Atreus and one of the generals who had conquered Troy. "
― Brian Herbert , House Atreides (Prelude to Dune #1)
62 " Paulus abhorred inaction, always telling his son that even the wrong decision was better than no decision at all. "
63 " The working Planetologist has access to many resources, data, and projections. However, his most important tools are human beings. Only by cultivating ecological literacy among the people themselves can he save an entire planet. Pardot Kynes, The Case for Bela Tegeuse "
64 " married for politics in the first place, lad,” he had said. “Never should have tried to make it otherwise. At our station, marriage is a tool. Don’t muck everything up by trying to throw love into the mix. "
65 " dependence "
66 " Beliefs are more powerful than facts.” Leto stared through the thick sky at the magnificent, distant ship and frowned. It was often difficult to separate truth from fiction.… "
67 " Ix! Leto’s pulse accelerated. The machine planet. A strange and alien place. "
68 " The Ixians are masters of industrial sabotage and patent appropriation. Nowadays Richesians are only good for making cheap copies without any innovations. "
69 " Polish comes from the cities, went an old Fremen saying, wisdom from the desert. "
70 " According to a few sparse anthropological notes he had found, the Fremen were the remnants of an ancient wandering people, the Zensunni, who had been slaves dragged from world to world. After being freed, or perhaps escaping, from their captivity they had tried to find a home for centuries, but were persecuted everywhere they went. Finally, they’d gone to ground here on Arrakis—and somehow they had thrived. "
71 " The leaders of the Butlerian Jihad did not adequately define artificial intelligence, failing to foresee all possibilities of an imaginative society. Therefore, we have substantial gray areas in which to maneuver. "
72 " My son, this is more essential than anything you will learn on an industrial world: people are more important than machines. "
73 " Things change in the Imperium. Alliances form and dissolve on whims. "
74 " Spacing Guild: one leg of the political tripod maintaining the Great Convention. The Guild was the second mental-physical training school (see Bene Gesserit) after the Butlerian Jihad. The Guild monopoly on space travel and transport and upon international banking is taken as the beginning point of the Imperial Calendar. "
75 " As Leto thought back on what he had learned during his months on this planet, pieces of the puzzle began fitting together in his mind. “Think about it,” he said, “all of that can be fixed. They knew exactly where to hit in order to cripple Ix without causing permanent damage.…” Leto gave a grim nod, the reason suddenly clear to him. “The Tleilaxu want this world and its facilities intact. They plan to take over here. "
76 " Over a razor-edged horizon the shimmering atmosphere was filled with pastel colors of sunrise. In a brief instant the clean stillness of Arrakis allowed warm light to flood over the wrinkled landscape … a sudden deluge of brightness and rising heat. The white sun lurched above the horizon, without much precursor glow in the arid air. "
77 " Religion and law among the masses must be one and the same. An act of disobedience must be a sin and require religious penalties. This will have the dual benefit of bringing both greater obedience and greater bravery. We must depend not so much on the bravery of individuals, you see, as upon the bravery of a whole population. Pardot Kynes, address to gathered representatives of the greater sietches "
78 " The Bene Gesserit occupied themselves with numerous breeding schemes, as if farming humanity for their own obscure purposes. They also commanded one of the greatest storehouses of information in the Imperium, using their intricate libraries to look at the broad movements of peoples, to study the effects of one person’s actions amidst interplanetary politics. "
79 " Here the spice was everywhere: in the air, food, garments, wall hangings and rugs. Melange was intertwined with sietch life as much as water. "
80 " Memory and History are two sides of the same coin. In time, however, History tends to slant itself toward a favorable impression of events, while Memory is doomed to preserve the worst aspects. "