Home > Work > Children of Dune (Dune, #3)
1 " The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion. "
― Frank Herbert , Children of Dune (Dune, #3)
2 " One learns from books and example only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things. "
3 " I realize that humans cannot bear very much reality. Most lives are a flight from selfhood. Most prefer the truths of the stable. You stick your heads into the stanchions and munch contentedly until you die. Others use you for their purposes. Not once do you live outside the stable to lift your head and be your own creature. Muad'Dib came to tell you about that. Without understanding his message, you cannot revere him! "
4 " I'm going to rub your faces in things you try to avoid. I don't find it strange that all you want to believe is only that which comforts you. How else do humans invent the traps which betray us into mediocrity? How else do we define cowardice? "
5 " But one learns from books and reels only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things. "
6 " What you of the CHOAM directorate seem unable to understand is that you seldom find real loyalties in commerce ... Men must want to do things of their own innermost drives. People, not commercial organisations or chains of command, are what make great civilizations work, every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces. If you overorganize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness — they cannot work and their civilization collapses. "
7 " 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? "
8 " Good governance 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. "
9 " If you focus your awareness only upon your own rightness, then you invite the forces of opposition to overwhelm you. "
10 " One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp too strongly is to be taken over by power, and thus to become its victim. "
11 " We’ve lost something vital, I tell you. When we lost it, we lost the ability to make good decisions. We fall upon decisions these days the way we fall upon an enemy—or wait and wait, which is a form of giving up, and we allow the decisions of others to move us. Have we forgotten that we were the ones who set this current flowing? "
12 " Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty. "
13 " The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth. "
14 " The child who refuses to travel in the father's harness, this is the symbol of man's most unique capability. "I do not have to be what my father was. I do not have to obey my father's rules or even believe everything he believed. It is my strength as a human that I can make my own choices of what to believe and what not to believe, of what to be and what not to be. "
15 " The future remains uncertain and so it should, for it is the canvas upon which we paint our desires. Thus always the human condition faces a beautifully empty canvas. We possess only this moment in which to dedicate ourselves continuously to the sacred presence which we share and create. "
16 " Most deadly errors arise from obsolete assumptions. "
17 " When I am Weaker Thn You, I ask you for Freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am Stronger than you, I take away your Freedom Because that is according to my principles. "
18 " You aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgement of your existence. "
19 " If all those around you believe some particular thing, you will soon be tempted to share in that belief. "
20 " Often I must Speak otherwise than I Think. This is Called Diplomacy. "
