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b3b5efb
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There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man--with human flesh.
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Frank Herbert |
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5d5c938
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This moment here is the only observable time and place for us in our universe.
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Frank Herbert |
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6dace3a
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We Bene Gesserit sift people to find the humans.
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Frank Herbert |
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791445e
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What a dolt my father sends me for weaponry," Paul intoned. "This doltish Gurney Halleck has forgotten the first lesson for a fighting man armed and shielded." Paul snapped the force button at his waist, felt the crinkled-skin tingling of the defensive field at his forehead and down his back, heard external sounds take on characteristic shield-filtered flatness. "In shield fighting, one moves fast on defense, slow on attack," Paul said. "At..
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Frank Herbert |
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6e27f90
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I guess I'm not in the mood for it today," Paul said. "Mood?" Halleck's voice betrayed his outrage even through the shield's filtering. "What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises--no matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It's not for fighting."
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Frank Herbert |
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4668869
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Life improves the closed system's capacity to sustain life. Life - all life - is in the service of life. Necessary nutrients are made available to life by life in greater and greater richness as the diversity of life increases. The entire landscape comes alive, filled with relationships and relationships within relationships.
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frank herbert |
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466e1fc
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Humans live best when each has his own place, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things. Destroy the place and destroy the person.
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Frank Herbert |
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70a7284
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The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows--a wall against the wind. This is the willow's purpose." Paul"
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Frank Herbert |
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600a3d7
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We have a disturbed relationship with our past which religion cannot explain. We are primitive in unexplainable ways, our lives woven of the familiar and the strange, the reasonable and the insane.
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religion
insanity
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Frank Herbert |
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27d0c5a
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Governments may rise and fall for reasons which appear insignificant, Prince. What small events! An argument between two women . . . which way the wind blows on a certain day . . . a sneeze, a cough, the length of a garment or the chance collision of a fleck of sand and a courtier's eye. It is not always the majestic concerns of Imperial ministers which dictate the course of history, nor is it necessarily the pontifications of priests which..
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Frank Herbert |
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ccc7e13
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Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this qualit..
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Frank Herbert |
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5c3dfef
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Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them." " 'Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind,"
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Frank Herbert |
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08ba6ed
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You know the myth of the Great Spice Hoard? Yes, I know about that story, too. A majordomo brought it to me one day to amuse me. The story says there is a hoard of melange, a gigantic hoard, big as a great mountain. The hoard is concealed in the depths of a distant planet. It is not Arrakis, that planet. It is not Dune. The spice was hidden there long ago, even before the First Empire and the Spacing Guild. The story says Paul-Muad'Dib went..
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Frank Herbert |
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bf55f72
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The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows--a wall against the wind. This is the willow's purpose.
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Frank Herbert |
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4d18335
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it's a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, those things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. We tend to flounder around, blaming everything but the actual, deep-seated thing that's really chewing on us.
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Frank Herbert |
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40d413f
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Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part on the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him.
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leadership
storytelling
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Frank Herbert |
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c12cc32
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God created Arrakis to train the faithful.
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Frank Herbert |
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5597a83
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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. --
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Frank Herbert |
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5bdd351
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There's always a prevailing mystique in any civilization," Leto said. "It builds itself as a barrier against change, and that always leaves future generations unprepared for the universe's treachery. All mystiques are the same in building these barriers--the religious mystique, the hero-leader mystique, the messiah mystique, the mystique of science/technology, and the mystique of nature itself. We live in an Imperium which such a mystique h..
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Frank Herbert |
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d7e73bc
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People, not commercial organizations or chains of command, are what make great civilizations work. Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness--they cannot work and their civilization collapses.
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Frank Herbert |
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4d569ea
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Questions are my enemies. For my questions explode!
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Frank Herbert |
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fe68829
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Major flaws in government arise from a fear of making radical internal changes even though a need is clearly seen. --Darwi Odrade
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Frank Herbert |
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8380434
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But oh, the perils of leadership in a species so anxious to be told what to do. How little they knew of what they created by their demands. Leaders made mistakes. And those mistakes, amplified by the numbers who followed without questioning, moved inevitably toward great disasters.
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human
leadership
error
disaster
imperfection
hierarchy
follow
mistakes
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Frank Herbert |
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b9b52aa
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Life is not an option, it is a gift. Death is the option.
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Frank Herbert |
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49ee2a4
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Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit. This is the fine point on which all the legal professions of history have based their job security.
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Frank Herbert |
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694a60c
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But the tripod upon which Eternity swings is composed of flesh and thought and emotion.
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Frank Herbert |
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09a2a15
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Gods need take no responsibility for anything except genesis. Gods accept everything and thus accept nothing. Gods must be identifiable yet remain anonymous. Gods do not need a spirit world.
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Frank Herbert |
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80bec9c
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It's a beautiful morning, Sire," the guard said "Yes, it is." The Duke nodded, thinking: Perhaps this planet could grow on one. Perhaps it could ba a good home for my son. Then he saw the human figures moving into the flower fields, sweeping with them strange scythe-like devices--dew gatherers. Water so precious here that even the dew must be collected. And it could be a hideous place, the Duke thought." --
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Frank Herbert |
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02f01c0
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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 upon the relatively simple actions of single individuals. --FROM THE TLEILAXU GODBUK
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Frank Herbert |
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f8b1eae
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Words can carry any burden we wish. All that's required is agreement and a tradition upon which to build.
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Frank Herbert |
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382ceb4
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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."
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Frank Herbert |
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0613930
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The body, learning a thing is good for it, interprets the flavor as pleasurable--slightly euphoric. And, like life, never to be truly synthesized.
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Frank Herbert |
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58c706e
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Piter spoke to Jessica. "I'd thought of binding you by a threat held over your son, but I begin to see that would not have worked. I let emotion cloud reason. Bad policy for a Mentat."
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mentat
harkonnen
piter-de-vries
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Frank Herbert |
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c178294
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Come, come," the Baron said. "We don't have much time and pain is quick. Please don't bring it to this, my dear Duke." The Baron looked up at Piter who stood at Leto's shoulder. "Piter doesn't have all his tools here, but I'm sure he could improvise." "Improvisation is sometimes the best, Baron."
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harkonnen
piter-de-vries
dune
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Frank Herbert |
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50e4a86
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Laws tend to be temporary over the long haul, Moneo. There is no such thing as rule-governed creativity.
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Frank Herbert |
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ce1f78b
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If you focus your awareness only upon your own rightness, then you invite the forces of opposition to overwhelm you. This is a common error. Even I, your teacher, have made it.
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Frank Herbert |
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4f92b2b
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They were undoubtedbly sincere in subscribing to the argument that nuclear weapons were a reserve held for one purpose: defense of humankind should a threatening 'other intelligence' ever be encountered.
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Frank Herbert |
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8c3ce13
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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. --
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Frank Herbert |
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818b894
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They who learn the lesson of self-deception too well shall perish by that deception.
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Frank Herbert |
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242c81d
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Even in the most barren wasteland, a flower always grows. Recognize this, and learn to adapt to your surroundings. -Dr. Bryce Haynes (planetary ecologist assigned to study Duneworld)
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Frank Herbert |
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ec4f39a
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Stilgar put a hand on Idaho's shoulder. "All men are interlopers, old friend."
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Frank Herbert |
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b38cc22
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But, putting on a stillsuit, he put on the desert.
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Frank Herbert |
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2ebf506
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It is not always the majestic concerns of Imperial ministers which dictate the course of history, nor is it necessarily the pontifications of priests which move the hands of God.
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Frank Herbert |
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64befd0
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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 y..
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Frank Herbert |