from CHAPTERHOUSE: DUNE

pg 001: Those who would repeat the past must control the teaching of history. -
Bene Gesserit Coda

pg 012: The person who takes the banal and the ordinary and illuminates it in a
new way can terrify. We do not want our ideas changed. We feel threatened by such
demands. "I already know the important things!" we say. Then Changer comes and
throws our old ideas away. - The Zensufi Master

pg 023: We tend to become like the worst in those we oppose. - Bene Gesserit Coda

pg 059: All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological

personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the
corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition
to which they are quickly addicted. - Missionaria Protectiva, Text QIV (decto)

pg 070: The writing of history is largely a process of diversion. Most historical

accounts distract attention from the secret influences behind great events. - The
Bashar Teg

pg 094: Education is no substitute for intelligence. That elusive quality is

defined only in part by your puzzle-solving ability. It is in the creation of new
puzzles reflecting what your senses report that you round out the definition. -
Mentat Text One (decto)

pg 099: Never compliment the chef in a private establishment. Chefs can be

replaced. Hostess is irreplaceable.

pg 101: People who demand the oracle predict their lives really want to know where
the treasure is hidden... Know your entire future and nothing will ever surprise
you.

pg 119: 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. -Bene Gesserit Coda

pg 135: (They would be glittering words, filled with drama and the tensions of his
testing.) History, after all, was always written by the victors.

pg 138: "We should grant power over our affairs only to those who are reluctant to
hold it and then only under conditions that increase the reluctance", Darwi Odrade

pg 153: In each instance action is illusory. Like appointing a committee to study

a problem. The more people on the committee, the more preconceptions are applied
to the problem.

pg 156: "Democracy is a stupid idea anyway!" "We agree. It's demagogue-prone.

That's a disease to which electoral systems are vulnerable. Yet demagogues are
easy to identify. They gesture a lot and speak with pulpit rhythms, using words
that ring of religious fervour and god-fearing sincerety."

pg 169: To know a thing well, know its limits. Only when pushed beyond its
tolerances will the true nature be seen. - The Amtal Rule

pg 169: Do not depend only on theory when your life is at stake. - Bene Gesserit
Commentary
pg 169: Sympathy for the enemy - a weakness of police and armies alike. Most
perilous are the unconscious sympathies directing you to preserve your enemy
intact because the enemy is your justification for existence.

pg 182: Major flaws in government arise from a fear of making radical changes even
though a need is clearly seen. - Darwi Odrade

pg 191: Time does not count itself. You have to look at a circle and this is
apparent. - Leto II(The Tyrant)

pg 194: "Who will tell us what happens next?", he asks. Is that what you want
Rabbi? You will not like what you hear. I guarantee it. From the moment the oracle
speaks your future becomes your past. How you would wail in your boredom. Nothing
new, not ever. Everything old in that one instant of revelation. "But this is not
what I wanted!" I can hear you saying it. No brutality, no savagery, no quiet
happiness nor exploding joy can come upon you unexpectedly. Like a runaway tube
train in its wormhole, your life will sped through to its final moment of
confrontation. Like a moth in the car you will beat your wings against the sides
and ask Fate to let you out. "Let the tube undergo a magical change of directions.
Let something new happen! Don't let the terrible things I have seen come to pass!"

pg 216: Truth is an empty cup

pg 216: Some precious stones could be identified by their impurities. Experts

mapped impurities within the stones. A secret fingerprint. People were like that.
You often knew them by their defects. The glittering surface told you too little.
Good identification required you look deep inside and see the impurities. There
was the gem quality of a total being. What would Van Gogh have been without
impurities?

pg 237: Give me the judgement of balanced minds in preferrence to laws every time.
Codecs and manuals create patterned behaviour. All patterned behaviour tends to go
unquestioned, gathering destructive momentum. - Darwi Odrade

pg 263: Enter no conflict against fanatics unless you can defuse them. Oppose a
religion with another religion only if your proofs (miracles) are irrefutable or
if you can mesh in a way that the fanatics accept you as god-inspired. This has
long been the barrier to science assuming a mantle of divine revelation. Science
is so obviously man-made. Fanatics (and many are fanatics on one subject or
another) must know where you stand, but more important, must recognize who
whispers in your ear. - Missionaria Protectiva, Primary Teaching

pg 267: She paused where the edge of the building would cut off their view of the
setting sun in the next steps and, still in the secret language of the Tleilaxu,
said, "The sun is not God".

pg 294: For every veteran who returns with a new sense of destiny ('I survived;
that must be God's purpose') more come home with barely submerged bitterness,
ready to take the easy way out because they saw so much of it in the stresses of
war. (- Miles Teg's thoughts)

pg 300: Spend energies on those who make you strong. Energy spent on weaklings
drags you to doom (Honoured Matre rule). Bene Gesserit commentary: Who judges? -
The Dortujla Record

pg 308: A hunchback does not see his own hunch. - Folk Saying

pg 317: Religion must be accepted as a source of energy. It can be directed for

our purposes, but only within limits that experience reveals. Here is the secret
meaning of Free Will. - Missionaria Protectiva, Primary Teaching

pg 327: Avoid excesses. Overcorrect and you always have a fine mess on your hands,
the necessity to make larger and larger corrections. Oscillation. Fanatics are
marvelous creators of oscillation.

pg 332: The tyranny of the minority cloaked in the mask of the majority. Downfall
of democracy. Either overthrown by its own excesses or eaten away by bureaucracy.
(- Odrade)

pg 332: First, a Civil Service law masked in the lie that it was the only way to
correct demagogic excesses and spoils systems. Then the accumulation of power in
places voters cannot touch. And finally, aristocracy. (- the Tyrant, Leto II)

pg 332: Evidence! What is evidence except those things you are allowed to
perceive? That's what Law tries to control: carefully managed reality. (- Reverend
Mother Murbella)

pg 336: Absolute power attracts the absolutely corruptible. This is the danger of
entrenched bureaucracy to its subject population. Even spoil systems are
preferrable because levels of tolerance are lower and the corrupt can be thrown
out periodically. Entrenched bureaucracy seldom can be touched short of violence.
Beware when Civil Service and Military join hands!

pg 342: Death makes a prophet's voice louder. Martyrs are truly dangerous. (- Bene
Gesserit)

pg 342: Don't march in the streets with others who share your prejudices. Loud
shouts are often the easiest to ignore. "I mean, look at them out there shouting
their heads off! You want to make common cause with them?" (- Odrade)

pg 342: To create change, you find leverage points and move them. Beware blind
alleys. Offers of high positions are a common distraction paraded before marchers.
Leverage points are not all in high office. They are often at economic or
communication centres and unless you know this, high office is useless. Even
lieutenants can alter our course. Not by changing reports but by burying unwanted
orders. (- Odrade)

pg 344: Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find
your liberty. - The Coda

pg 349: Making workable choices occurs in a crucible of informative mistakes. Thus

intelligence accepts fallibility. And when absolute (infallible) choices are not
known, Intelligence takes chances with limited data in an arena where mistakes are
not only possible but also necessary. - Darwi Odrade

pg 359: "It is naïve to expect any bureaucracy to take brilliant innovations and
put them to good use. Bureaucracies ask different questions... These are the
typical questions, ... : Who gets the credit? Who will be blamed if it causes
problems? Will it shift the power structure, costing jobs? Or will it make some
subordinate department more important?", Darwi Odrade

pg 361: Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know. -
Zensunni koan

pg 369: Answers are a perilous grip on the universe. They can appear sensible yet
explain nothing. - The Zensunni Whip
pg 395: You expected battle casualties to show that ultimate evidence of common
humanity - flowing red that darkened on exposure but always left its indelible
mark in the memories of those who saw it. Lack of bloody carnage was an unknown
and, in warfare, unknown had a history of bringing extreme peril.

pg 416: Don't ask the oracle what you can gain. That's the trap. Beware the real
fortune-teller! Would you like thirty-five hundred years of boredom?