Feeling lazy so I'll enter these into the XML some other time. New and replacement quotes from the Frank Herbert books:
Research Labs:
Technology, in common with many other activities, tends toward avoidance of risks by investors. Uncertainty is ruled out if possible. Capital investment follows this rule, since 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.
-Assessment of Ix,
Bene Gesserit Archives
Solaris Economy:
The failure of CHOAM? Quite simple: They ignore the fact that larger commercial powers wait at the edges of their activities, powers that could swallow them the way a slig swallows garbage.
-Bene Gesserit Council notes,
Archives #SXX9OCH
Jihad:
O Paul, thou Muad'Dib,
Mahdi of all men,
Thy breath exhaled
Sent forth the hurricane.
-Songs of Muad'Dib
Law of Arrakis:
The one-eyed view of our universe says you must not look far afield for problems. Such problems may never arrive. Instead, tend to the wolf within your fences. The packs ranging outside may not even exist.
-The Azhar Book; Shamra I:4
Galactic Religion:
In this age when the means of human transport include devices which can span the deeps of space in transtime, and other devices which can carry men swiftly over virtually impassable planetary surfaces, it seems odd to think of attempting long journeys afoot. yet this remains a primary means of travel on Arrakis, a fact attributed partly to preference and partly to the brutal treatment which this planet reserves for anything mechanical. In the strictures of Arrakis, human flesh remains the most durable and reliable resource for the Hajj. Perhaps it is the implicit awareness of this fact which makes Arrakis the ultimate mirror of the soul.
-Handbook of the Hajj
Arrakis Habitation:
The sietch at the desert's rim
Was Liet's, was Kynes's,
Was Stilgar's, was Muad'Dib's
And once more, was Stilgar's.
The Naibs one by one sleep in the sand,
But the sietch endures.
-from a Fremen song
Spice Industry:
melange (me'-lange also ma,lanj) n-s, origin uncertain (thought to derive from ancient Terran Franzh): a. mixture of spices; b. spice of Arrakis (Dune) with geriatric properties first noted by Yanshuph Ashkoko, royal chemist in reign of Shakkad the Wise; Arrakeen melange, found only in deepest desert sands of Arrakis, linked to prophetic visions of Paul Muad'Dib (Atreides), first Fremen Mahdi; also employed by Spacing Guild Navigators and the Bene Gesserit.
-Dictionary Royal
fifth edition
High Council:
Good government 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.
-Law and Governance
The Spacing Guild Manual
Feudalism:
Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling classwhether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.
-Politics as Repeat Phenomenon:
Bene Gesserit Training Manual
Planetary Ecology:
Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans in the finite space of a planetary ecosystem as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.
-Pardot Kynes, First Planetologist of Arrakis
Caste Systems:
Humans live best when each has his place to stand, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things and what he may achieve. Destroy the place and you destroy the person.
-Bene Gesserit Teaching
Benevolence:
Life cannot find reasons to sustain it, cannot be a source of decent mutual regard, unless each of us resolves to breathe such qualities into it.
-Chenoeh: "Conversations with Leto II"
Defense Tactics:
Any power must always meet a greater power. Paul Muad'Dib taught this lesson to the Sardaukar on the Plains of Arrakeen. His descendants have yet to learn the lesson for themselves.
-The Preacher at Arrakeen
Defensive Armaments:
The basic rule is this: Never support weakness; always support strength.
-The Bene Gesserit Coda
Mind Training:
Nothing surpasses the complexity of the human mind.
-Leto II: Dar-es-Balat Records
Great Houses:
The long table on the right is set for a banquet of roast desert hare in sauce cepeda. The other dishes, clockwise to the right from the far end of the table, are aplomage sirian, chukka under glass, coffee with melange (note the hawk crest of the Atreides on the urn), pot-a-oie and, in the Balut crystal bottle, sparkling Caladan wine. Note the ancient poison detector concealed in the chandelier.
-Dar-es-Balat, Description at a Museum Display
Energy Sources:
I am the supreme energy-eater of this domain, and will remain so, alive or dead. My Government is the economy.
-Order in Concil
The Emperor Paul Muad'dib
Water Conservation:
There was this drylander who was asked which was more important, a literjon of water or a vast pool of water? The drylander thought a moment and then said: "The literjon is more important. No single person could own a great pool of water. But a literjon you could hide under your cloak and run away with it. No one would know."
-The Jokes of Ancient Dune,
Bene Gesserit Archives
Spice Extraction:
The sandcrawler directly in front of you dates from the Atreides times. Grouped around it, moving clockwise from your left, are a small harvester, a carryall, a primitive spice factory and the other support equipment. All are explained at each station. Note the illuminated quotation above the display: "FOR THEY SHALL SUCK OF THE ABUNDANCE OF THE SEAS AND OF THE TREASURE IN THE SAND." This ancient religious quotation was oft repeated by the famous Gurney Halleck.
-Guide Announcement, Museum of Dar-es-Balat
Desert Survival:
Limits of survival are set by climate, those long drifts of change which a generation may fail to notice. And it is the extremes of climate which set the pattern. Lonely, finite humans may observe climatic provinces, fluctuations of annual weather and, occasionally may observe such things as "This is a colder year than I've ever known." Such things are sensible. But humans are seldom alerted to the shifting average through a great span of years. And it is precisely in this alerting that humans learn how to survive on any planet. They must learn climate.
-Arrakis, the Transformation
After Harq al-Ada
Weirding Way:
The advent of the Field Process shield and the lasgun with their explosive interaction, deadly to attacker and attacked, placed the current determinatives on weapons technology. We need not go into the special role of atomics. The fact that any Family in my Empire could so deploy its atomics as to destroy the planetary bases of fifty or more other Families causes some nervousness, true. But all of us possess precautionary plans for devastating retaliation. Guild and Landsraad contain the keys which hold this force in check. No, my concern goes to the development of humans as special weapons. Here is a virtually unlimited field which a few powers are developing.
-Muad'dib: Lecture to the War College
from The Stilgar Chronicle
Culture of Dune:
"Once more the drama begins."
-The Emperor Paul Muad'dib
on his ascension to the Lion Throne
(Move Stilgar Eden quote to Way of Liet?)
Air Power:
"I must rule with eye and clawas the hawk among lesser birds."
-Atreides assertion
Imperialism:
No matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no matter the developments of life and society nor the complexity of the machine/human interface, there always come interludes of lonely power when the course of humankind, the very future of humankind, depends on the relatively simple actions of single individuals.
-from The Tleilaxu Godbuk
Offworld Trade:
You have loved Caladan
And lamented its lost host
But pain discovers
New lovers cannot erase
Those forever ghost
-Refrain from The Habbanya Lament
Prescience:
Either we abandon the long-horned Theory of Relativity, or we cease to believe that we can engage in continued accurate prediction of the future. Indeed, knowing the future raises a host of questions which cannot be answered under conventional assumptions unless one first projects an Observer outside of Time and, second, nullifies all movement. If you accept the Theory of Relativity, it can be shown that Time and the Observer must stand still in relationship to each or inaccuracies will intervene. This would seem to say that it is impossible to engage in accurate prediction of the future. How, then, do we explain the continued seeking after this visionary goal by respected scientists? How, then do we explain Muad'Dib?
-Lectures on Prescience
By Harq al-Ada
Vendettas:
We tend to become like the worst in those we oppose.
-Bene Gesserit Coda
Supertensile Materials:
To know a thing well, know it limits. Only when pushed beyond its tolerances will true nature be seen.
-The Amtal Rule
Military Industrial Complex:
When I am weaker than you, I ask 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.
-Words of an ancient philosopher
(Attributed by Harq al-Ada to one Louis Veuillot)
