--- Title: Dune Author: Frank Herbert Tags: TVZ, readwise, books date: 2023-02-20 --- # Dune  Author:: Frank Herbert ## Highlights > “You’ve heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There’s an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind.” ([Location 190](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001F0WXY0&location=190)) > “Ever sift sand through a screen?” she asked. The tangential slash of her question shocked his mind into a higher awareness: Sand through a screen. He nodded. “We Bene Gesserit sift people to find the humans.” ([Location 215](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001F0WXY0&location=215)) > “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.” ([Location 243](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001F0WXY0&location=243)) > Schools were started to train human talents.” “Bene Gesserit schools?” She nodded. “We have two chief survivors of those ancient schools: the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild. The Guild, so we think, emphasizes almost pure mathematics. Bene Gesserit performs another function.” “Politics,” he said. ([Location 248](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001F0WXY0&location=248)) > It is said a man will come one day and find in the gift of the drug his inward eye. He will look where we cannot—into both feminine and masculine pasts.” “Your Kwisatz Haderach?” “Yes, the one who can be many places at once: the Kwisatz Haderach. ([Location 271](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001F0WXY0&location=271)) > We’ve a three-point civilization: the Imperial Household balanced against the Federated Great Houses of the Landsraad, and between them, the Guild with its damnable monopoly on interstellar transport. In politics, the tripod is the most unstable of all structures. ([Location 472](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001F0WXY0&location=472)) > A world is supported by four things....” She held up four big-knuckled fingers. “... the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing....” She closed her fingers into a fist. “... without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!” ([Location 607](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001F0WXY0&location=607)) > A whole pattern of conversation welled up in his mind—the kind of thing he might use to dispel the vapors in his men before a battle. The pattern froze before it could be vocalized, confronted by the single thought: This is my son. “It’ll be dangerous,” he admitted. ([Location 839](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001F0WXY0&location=839)) > Jessica thought about the prophecy—the Shari-a and all the panoplia propheticus, a Bene Gesserit of the Missionaria Protectiva dropped here long centuries ago—long dead, no doubt, but her purpose accomplished: the protective legends implanted in these people against the day of a Bene Gesserit’s need. Well, that day had come. ([Location 1091](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001F0WXY0&location=1091)) > The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training. ” ([Location 5158](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001F0WXY0&location=5158)) > “Out here, woman, we carry no paper for contracts. We make no evening promises to be broken at dawn. When a man says a thing, that’s the contract. As leader of my people, I’ve put them in bond to my word. Teach us this weirding way and you have sanctuary with us as long as you wish. Your water shall mingle with our water.” ([Location 5560](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001F0WXY0&location=5560)) > The revelation shook him, and Jessica thought: If only he knew the tricks we use! She must’ve been good, that Bene Gesserit of the Missionaria Protectiva. These Fremen are beautifully prepared to believe in us. ([Location 5594](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001F0WXY0&location=5594)) > All of them, she thought, an entire culture trained to military order. What a priceless thing is hereforan outcast Duke! ([Location 5662](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001F0WXY0&location=5662)) > She knew the cant of the Missionaria Protectiva, knew how to adapt the techniques of legend and fear and hope to her emergency needs, but she sensed wild changes here ... as though someone had been in among these Fremen and capitalized on the Missionaria Protectiva’s imprint. ([Location 5774](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001F0WXY0&location=5774)) > Pass within, she thought. An odd way of putting it. But the rest of it fitted into the cant well enough. And she felt a cynical bitterness at what she had done. Our Missionaria Protectiva seldom fails. A place was prepared for us in this wilderness. The prayer of the salat has carved out our hiding place. Now ... I must play the part of Auliya, the Friend of God... Sayyadina to rogue peoples who’ve been so heavily imprinted with our Bene Gesserit soothsay they even call their chief priestesses Reverend Mothers. ([Location 5794](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001F0WXY0&location=5794)) > “I will tell you a thing about your new name,” Stilgar said. “The choice pleases us. Muad‘Dib is wise in the ways of the desert. Muad’Dib creates his own water. Muad‘Dib hides from the sun and travels in the cool night. Muad’Dib is fruitful and multiplies over the land. Muad‘Dib we call ’instructor-of-boys.’ That is a powerful base on which to build your life, Paul-Muad’Dib, who is Usul among us. We welcome you.” ([Location 6054](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001F0WXY0&location=6054)) > “When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement become headlong—faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thought of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it’s too late.” ([Location 7503](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001F0WXY0&location=7503)) > Us, Gurney thought. He means the Fremen. He speaks of himself as one of them. Again, Gurney looked at the spice blue in Paul’s eyes. His own eyes, he knew, had a touch of the color, but smugglers could get offworld foods and there was a subtle caste implication in the tone of the eyes among them. They spoke of “the touch of the spicebrush” to mean a man had gone too native. And there was always a hint of distrust in the idea. ([Location 8152](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001F0WXY0&location=8152)) > “Stop playing the fool,” Paul barked. “The Guild is like a village beside a river. They need the water, but can only dip out what they require. They cannot dam the river and control it, because that focuses attention on what they take, it brings down eventual destruction. The spice flow, that’s their river, and I have built a dam. But my dam is such that you cannot destroy it without destroying the river.” ([Location 9370](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001F0WXY0&location=9370)) > Paul stared down into her eyes, remembering her suddenly as she had stood once with little Leto in her arms, their child now dead in this violence. “I swear to you now,” he whispered, “that you’ll need no title. That woman over there will be my wife and you but a concubine because this is a political thing and we must weld peace out of this moment, enlist the Great Houses of the Landsraad. We must obey the forms. Yet that princess shall have no more of me than my name. No child of mine nor touch nor softness of glance, nor instant of desire.” ([Location 9618](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001F0WXY0&location=9618)) > bitter laugh escaped Jessica. “Think on it, Chani: that princess will have the name, yet she’ll live as less than a concubine—never to know a moment of tenderness from the man to whom she’s bound. While we, Chani, we who carry the name of concubine—history will call us wives.” ([Location 9624](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001F0WXY0&location=9624)) > When will we solve it? the Fremen asked. When will we see Arrakis as a paradise? In the manner of a teacher answering a child who has asked the sum of 2 plus 2, Kynes told them: “From three hundred to five hundred years.” A lesser folk might have howled in dismay. But the Fremen had learned patience from men with whips. It was a bit longer than they had anticipated, but they all could see that the blessed day was coming. They tightened their sashes and went back to work. Somehow, the disappointment made the prospect of paradise more real. ([Location 9690](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001F0WXY0&location=9690)) > “The thing the ecologically illiterate don’t realize about an ecosystem,” Kynes said, “is that it’s a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche. A system has order, a flowing from point to point. If something dams that flow, order collapses. The untrained might miss that collapse until it was too late. That’s why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.” ([Location 9738](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001F0WXY0&location=9738))