Most discipline is hidden discipline, designed not to liberate but to limit.  
Do not ask Why?  Be cautious with How?  Why? leads inexorably to paradox.  How
? traps you in a universe of cause and effect.  Both deny the infinite.

-The Apocrypha of Arrakis
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Explosions are also compressions of time.  Observable changes in the natural u
niverse all are explosive to some degree and from some point of view; otherwis
e you would not notice them.  Smooth Continuity of change, if slowed sufficien
tly, goes without notice by observers whose time/attention span is too short. 
 Thus, I tell you, I have seen changes you would never have marked.

-Leto II
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The existence of no-ships raises the possibility of destroying entire planets 
without retaliation.  A large object, asteroid or equivalent, may be sent agai
nst the planet.  Or the people can be set against each other by sexual subvers
ion, and then can be armed to destroy themselves.  These Honored Matres appear
 to favor this latter technique.

-Bene Gesserit Analysis
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Humans live best when each has his place to stand, when each knows where he be
longs in the scheme of things and what he may achieve.  Destroy the place and 
you destroy the person.

-Bene Gesserit Teaching
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Has not religion claimed a patent on creation for all of these millennia?

-The Tleilaxu Question, from Muad'dib Speaks
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Some days it's melange; some days it's bitter dirt.

-Rakian Aphorism
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The trouble with some kinds of warfare (and be certain the Tyrant knew this, 
because it is implicit in his lesson) is that they destroy all moral decency i
n susceptible types.  Warfare of these kinds will dump the destroyed survivors
 back into an innocent population that is incapable of even imagining what suc
h returned soldiers might do.

-Teachings of the Golden Path, Bene Gesserit Archives
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Ten thousand years since Leto II began his metamorphosis from human into the s
andworm of Rakis and historians still argue over his motives.  Was he driven b
y the desire for long life?  He lived more than ten times the normal span of t
hree hundred SY, but consider the price he paid.  Was it the lure of power?  H
e is called the Tyrant for good reason but what did power bring him that a hum
an might want?  Was he driven to save humankind from itself?  We have only his
 own words about his Golden Path to answer this and I cannot accept the self-s
erving records of Dar-es-Balat.  Might there have been other gratifications, w
hich only his experiences would illuminate?  Without better evidence the quest
ion is moot.  We are reduced to saying only that "He did it!" The physical fac
t alone is undeniable.

-The Metamorphosis of Leto II, 10,000th Anniversary Peroration by Gaus Andaud
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Technology, in common with many other activities, tends toward avoidance of ri
sks by investors.  Uncertainty is ruled out if possible.  Capital investment f
ollows this rule, since people generally prefer the predictable.  Few recogniz
e how destructive this can be, how it imposes severe limits on variability and
 thus makes whole populations fatally vulnerable to the shocking ways our univ
erse can throw the dice.

-Assessment of Ix, Bene Gesserit Archives
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In my estimation, more misery has been created by reformers than by any other 
force in human history.  Show me someone who says "Something must be done!" an
d I will show you a head full of vicious intentions that have no other outlet.
  What we must strive for always! is to find the natural flow and go with it.

-The Reverend Mother Taraza, Conversational Record, BG File GSXXMAT9
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The Tleilaxu secret must be in their sperm.  Our tests prove that their sperm 
does not carry forward in a straight genetic fashion.  Gaps occur.  Every Tlei
laxu we have examined has hidden his inner self from us.  They are naturally i
mmune to an Ixian Probe!  Secrecy at the deepest levels, that is their ultimat
e armor and their ultimate weapon.

-Bene Gesserit Analysis, Archives Code:  BTXX441WOR
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The outer surface of a balloon is always larger than the center of the damned 
thing!  That's the whole point of the Scattering!

-Bene Gesserit response to an Ixian suggestion that new investigative probes b
e sent out among the Lost Ones
%
The failure of CHOAM?  Quite simple:  They ignore the fact that larger commerc
ial powers wait at the edges of their activities, powers that could swallow th
em the way a slig swallows garbage.  This is the true threat of the Scattering
 -- to them and to us all.

-Bene Gesserit Council notes, Archives #SXX90CH
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At the quantum level our universe can be seen as an indeterminate place, predi
ctable in a statistical way only when you employ large enough numbers.  Betwee
n that universe and a relatively predictable one where the passage of a single
 planet can be timed to a picosecond, other forces come into play.  For the in
-between universe where we find our daily lives, that which you believe is a d
ominant force.  Your beliefs order the unfolding of daily events.  If enough o
f us believe, a new thing can be made to exist.  Belief structure creates a fi
lter through which chaos is sifted into order.

-Analysis of the Tyrant, the Taraza File:  BG Archives
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Life cannot find reasons to sustain it, cannot be a source of decent mutual re
gard, unless each of us resolves to breathe such qualities into it.

-Chenoeh:  "Conversations with Leto II"
%
Law always chooses sides on the basis of enforcement power.  Morality and lega
l niceties have little to do with it when the real question is:  Who has the c
lout?

-Bene Gesserit Council Proceedings:  Archives #XOX232
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The basic rule is this:  Never support weakness; always support strength.

-The Bene Gesserit Coda
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Nothing surpasses the complexity of the human mind.

-Leto II:  Dar-es-Balat Records
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The significant fact is this:  No Bene Tleilax female has ever been seen away 
from the protection of their core planets.  (Face Dancer mules who simulate fe
males do not count in this analysis.  They cannot be breeders.)  The Tleilaxu 
sequester their females to keep them from our hands.  This is our primary dedu
ction.  It must also be in the eggs that the Tleilaxu Masters conceal their mo
st essential secrets.

-Bene Gesserit Analysis -- Archives #XOXTM99 ..... 041
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What social inheritances went outward with the Scattering?  We know those time
s intimately.  We know both the mental and physical settings.  The Lost Ones t
ook with them a consciousness confined mostly to manpower and hardware.  There
 was a desperate need for room to expand driven by the myth of Freedom.  Most 
had not learned the deeper lesson of the Tyrant, that violence builds its own 
limits.  The Scattering was wild and random movement interpreted as growth (ex
pansion).  It was goaded by a profound fear (often unconscious) of stagnation 
and death.

-The Scattering:  Bene Gesserit Analysis (Archives)
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Liberty and Freedom are complex concepts.  They go back to religious ideas of 
Free Will and are related to the Ruler Mystique implicit in absolute monarchs.
  Without absolute monarchs patterned after the Old Gods and ruling by the gra
ce of a belief in religious indulgence, Liberty and Freedom would never have g
ained their present meaning.  These ideals owe their very existence to past ex
amples of oppression.  And the forces that maintain such ideas will erode unle
ss renewed by dramatic teaching or new oppressions.  This is the most basic ke
y to my life.

-Leto II, God Emperor of Dune:  Dar-es-Balat Records
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Quite naturally, holders of power wish to suppress wild research.  Unrestricte
d questing after knowledge has a long history of producing unwanted competitio
n.  The powerful want a "safe line of investigations," which will develop only
 those products and ideas that can be controlled and, most important, that wil
l allow the larger part of the benefits to be captured by inside investors.  U
nfortunately, a random universe full of relative variables does not insure suc
h a "safe line of investigations."

-Assessment of Ix, Bene Gesserit Archives
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Bureaucracy destroys initiative.  There is little that bureaucrats hate more t
han innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the ol
d routines.  Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept.
  Who enjoys appearing inept?

-A Guide to Trial and Error in Government, Bene Gesserit Archives
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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 tab
le, are aplomage sirian, chukka under glass, coffee with melange (note the haw
k crest of the Atreides on the urn), pot-a-oie and, in the Balut crystal bottl
e, sparkling Caladan wine.  Note the ancient poison detector concealed in the 
chandelier.

-Dar-es-Balat, Description at a Museum Display
%
People always want something more than immediate joy or that deeper sense call
ed happiness.  This is one of the secrets by which we shape the fulfillment of
 our designs.  The something more assumes amplified power with people who cann
ot give it a name or who (most often the case) do not even suspect its existen
ce.  Most people only react unconsciously to such hidden forces.  Thus, we hav
e only to call a calculated something more into existence, define it and give 
it shape, then people will follow.

-Leadership Secrets of the Bene Gesserit
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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
%
By your belief in singularities, in granular absolutes, you deny movement, eve
n the movement of evolution!  While you cause a granular universe to persist i
n your awareness, you are blind to movement.  When things change, your absolut
e universe vanishes, no longer accessible to your self-limiting perceptions.  
The universe has moved beyond you.

-First Draft, Atreides Manifesto, Bene Gesserit Archives
%
We have long known that the objects of our palpable sense experiences can be i
nfluenced by choice -- both conscious choice and unconscious.  This is a demon
strated fact that does not require that we believe some force within us reache
s out and touches the universe.  I address a pragmatic relationship between be
lief and what we identify as "real."  All of our judgments carry a heavy burde
n of ancestral beliefs to which we of the Bene Gesserit tend to be more suscep
tible than most.  It is not enough that we are aware of this and guard against
 it.  Alternative interpretations must always receive our attention.

-Mother Superior Taraza:  Argument in Council
%
This is the awe-inspiring universe of magic:  There are no atoms, only waves a
nd motions all around.  Here, you discard all belief in barriers to understand
ing.  You put aside understanding itself.  This universe cannot be seen, canno
t be heard, cannot be detected in any way by fixed perceptions.  It is the ult
imate void where no preordained screens occur upon which forms may be projecte
d.  You have only one awareness here -- the screen of the magi:  Imagination! 
 Here, you learn what it is to be human.  You are a creator of order, of beaut
iful shapes and systems, an organizer of chaos.

-The Atreides Manifesto, Bene Gesserit Archives
%
This room reconstructs a bit of the desert of Dune.  The sandcrawler directly 
in front of you dates from the Atreides times.  Grouped around it, moving cloc
kwise from your left, are a small harvester, a carryall, a primitive spice fac
tory and the other support equipment.  All are explained at each station.  Not
e the illuminated quotation above the display:  "FOR THEY SHALL SUCK OF THE AB
UNDANCE 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
%
Our fathers ate manna in the desert,
In the burning place where whirlwinds came.
Lord, save us from that horrible land!
Save us, oh-h-h-h-h save us
From that dry and thirsty land.

-Songs of Gurney Halleck, Museum of Dar-es-Balat
%
All organized religions face a common problem, a tender spot through which we 
may enter and shift them to our designs:  How do they distinguish hubris from 
revelation?

-Missionaria Protectiva, the Inner Teachings
%
I remember friends from wars all but we forgot.
All of them distilled into each wound we caught.
Those wounds are all the painful places where we fought.
Battles better left behind, ones we never sought.
What is it that we spent and what was it we bought?

-Songs of the Scattering
%
It is your fate, forgetfulness.  All of the old lessons of life, you lose and 
gain and lose and gain again.

-Leto II, the Voice of Dar-es-Balat
%
Survival of self, of species, and of environment, these are what drive humans.
  You can observe how the order of importance changes in a lifetime.  What are
 the things of immediate concern at a given age?  Weather?  The state of the d
igestion?  Does she (or he) really care?  All of those various hungers that fl
esh can sense and hope to satisfy.  What else could possibly matter?

-Leto II to Hwi Noree, His Voice:  Dar-es-Balat
%
There was a man who sat each day looking out through a narrow vertical opening
 where a single board had been removed from a tall wooden fence.  Each day a w
ild ass of the desert passed outside the fence and across the narrow opening -
- first the nose, then the head, the forelegs, the long brown back, the hindle
gs, and lastly the tail.  One day, the man leaped to his feet with the light o
f discovery in his eyes and he shouted for all who could hear him:  "It is obv
ious!  The nose causes the tail!"

-Stories of the Hidden Wisdom, from the Oral History of Rakis
%
Historians exercise great power and some of them know it.  They recreate the p
ast, changing it to fit their own interpretations.  Thus, they change the futu
re as well.

-Leto II, His Voice, from Dar-es-Balat
%
"I must rule with eye and claw -- as the hawk among lesser birds."

-Atreides assertion (Ref:  BG Archives)
%
Memory never recaptures reality.  Memory reconstructs.  All reconstructions ch
ange the original, becoming external frames of reference that inevitably fall 
short.

-Mentat Handbook
%
Concealed behind strong barriers the heart becomes ice.

-Darwi Odrade, Argument in Council
%
When strangers meet, great allowance should be made for differences of custom 
and training.

-The Lady Jessica, from "Wisdom of Arrakis"
%
May you die on Caladan!

-Ancient Drinking Toast
%
The worst potential competition for any organism can come from its own kind.  
The species consumes necessities.  Growth is limited by that necessity which i
s present in the least amount.  The least favorable condition controls the rat
e of growth.  (Law of the Minimum)

-From "Lessons of Arrakis"
%
O you who know what we suffer here, do not forget us in your prayers.

-Sign over Arrakeen Landing Field (Historical Records:  Dar-es-Balat)
%
The world is for the living.  Who are they?
We dared the dark to reach the white and warm.
She was the wind when the wind was in my way.
Alive at noon, I perished in her form.
Who rise from the flesh to spirit know the fall:
The word outleaps the world and light is all.

-Theodore Roethke (Historical Quotations:  Dar-es-Balat)
%
Justice?  Who asks for justice.  We make our own justice.  We make it here on 
Arrakis -- win or die.  Let us not rail about justice as long as we have arms 
and the freedom to use them.

-Leto I:  Bene Gesserit Archives
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We are not looking at a new state of matter but at a newly recognized relation
ship between consciousness and matter, which provides a more penetrating insig
ht into the workings of prescience.  The oracle shapes a projected inner unive
rse to produce new external probabilities out of forces that are not understoo
d.  There is no need to understand these forces before using them to shape the
 physical universe.  Ancient metal workers had no need to understand the molec
ular and submolecular complexities of their steel, bronze, copper, gold, and t
in.  They invented mystical powers to describe the unknown while they continue
d to operate their forges and wield their hammers.

-Mother Superior Taraza, Argument in Council
%