Metadata
- Author: Frank Herbert
- Full Title: Children of Dune
- Category: #books
Highlights
- “Too much knowledge never makes for simple decisions.” (Location 263)
- A convulsion of history had imprinted this place into men’s minds and beliefs. (Location 415)
- Nous avons changé tout cela, he thought, falling easily into one of the ancient tongues which he and Ghanima employed in private. “We have altered all of that.” He sighed. Oublier je ne puis. “I cannot forget.” (Location 586)
- It was true that the female had more weakness in that inner assault, he realized. There lay the origin of the Bene Gesserit fear. (Location 1419)
- By her reply, he knew she had finally suppressed her doubts and come around to agreement with his plan. The realization brought him no happiness. He found himself looking at his own hands, wondering if the dirt would cling. (Location 1567)
- “Nothing is absolutely certain, (Location 1587)
- You win back your consciousness of your inner being when you recognize the universe as a coherent whole. (Location 1624)
- my words would only confuse you and you would insist upon misunderstanding.” (Location 1679)
- “Ambitions tend to remain undisturbed by realities,” The Preacher said. (Location 1740)
- “Do you believe us to be such utter fools?” Jessica asked. “Indeed I do. Your Sisterhood is nothing but a bunch of damn’ fool old women who haven’t thought beyond their precious breeding program! Ghani and I know the leverage they have. Do you think us fools?” (Location 1881)
- “Very well,” he sighed. “First, as to Time: there is no difference between ten thousand years and one year; no difference between one hundred thousand years and a heartbeat. No difference. That is the first fact about Time. And the second fact: the entire universe with all of its Time is within me.” (Location 1911)
- “If one delays old age or death by the use of melange or by that learned adjustment of fleshly balance which you Bene Gesserits so rightly fear, such a delay invokes only an illusion of control. Whether one walks rapidly through the sietch or slowly, one traverses the sietch. And that passage of time is experienced internally.” (Location 1922)
- In the old ways and old religions, there’d been no future, only an endless now. (Location 2329)
- Muad’Dib had said another thing, Stilgar reminded himself: “Just as individuals are born, mature, breed, and die, so do societies and civilizations and governments.” (Location 2363)
- “To suspect your own mortality is to know the beginning of terror; to learn irrefutably that you are mortal is to know the end of terror.” (Location 2596)
- The Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam had been fond of explaining this particular error to her student, Jessica. “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.” (Location 3385)
- Above all else, the mentat must be a generalist, not a specialist. It is wise to have decisions of great moment monitored by generalists. Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless nitpicking, the ferocious quibble over a comma. (Location 4306)
- Reasoning depends upon programming, not on hardware, and we are the ultimate program!” (Location 4982)
- “To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.” (Location 5222)
- Farad’n had learned to listen silently testing, probing, holding his questions until he had shaped them into a cutting edge. (Location 5876)
- Men must want to do things out of their own innermost drives. 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. (Location 5899)
- He saw Time as a convention shaped by the collective mind of all sentience. (Location 5907)
- “The surest way to keep a secret is to make people believe they already know the answer,” (Location 6022)
- 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 (Location 6440)