295 lines
11 KiB
Plaintext
295 lines
11 KiB
Plaintext
Those who would repeat the past must control the teaching of history.
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-- Bene Gesserit Coda
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When I set out to lead humanity along my Golden Path I promised a lesson their
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bones would remember. I know a profound pattern humans deny with words even
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while their actions affirm it. They say they seek security and quiet,
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conditions they call peace. Even as they speak, they create seeds of turmoil
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and violence.
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-- Leto II, the God Emperor
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The person who takes the banal and ordinary and illuminates it in a new way can
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terrify. We do not want our ideas changed. We feel threatened by such
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demands. "I already know the important things!" we say. Then Changer comes
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and throws our old ideas away.
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-- The Zensufi Master
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Rules build up fortifications behind which small minds create satrapies.
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A perilous state of affairs in the best of times, disastrous during crises.
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-- Bene Gesserit Coda
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We tend to become like the worst in those we oppose.
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-- Bene Gesserit Coda
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You cannot know history unless you know how leaders move with its currents.
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Every leader requires outsiders to perpetuate his leadership. Examine my
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career: I was leader and outsider. Do not assume I merely created a
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Church-State. That was my function as leader and I copied historical models.
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Barbaric arts of my time reveal me as outsider. Favorite poetry: epics.
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Popular dramatic ideal: heroism. Dances: wildly abandoned.
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Stimulants to make people sense what I took from them. What did I take?
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The right to choose a role in history.
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-- Leto II (The Tyrant): Vether Bebe Translation
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You cannot manipulate a marionette with only one string.
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-- The Zensunni Whip
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Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your own life.
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The object can be stated this way: Live the best life you can. Life is a game
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whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise,
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you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play.
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Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They
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refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck.
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-- Darwi Odrade
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All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological
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personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the
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corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a
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condition to which they are quickly addicted.
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-- Missionaria Protectiva, Text QIV (decto)
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The writing of history is largely a process of diversion. Most historical
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accounts distract attention from the secret influences behind great events.
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-- The Bashar Teg
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Corruption wears infinite disguises.
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-- Tleilaxu Thu-zen
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Education is no substitute for intelligence. That elusive quality is defined
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only in part by puzzle-solving ability. It is in the creation of new puzzles
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reflecting what your senses report that you round out the definition.
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-- Mentat Text One (decto)
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Many things we do naturally become difficult only when we try to make them
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intellectual subjects. It is possible to know so much about a subject that
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you become totally ignorant.
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-- Mentat Text Two (dicto)
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Religion (emulation of adults by the child) encysts past mythologies: guesses,
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hidden assumptions of trust in the universe, pronouncements made in search of
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personal power, all mingled with shreds of enlightenment. And always an
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unspoken commandment: Thou shalt not question! We break that commandment
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daily in the harnessing of human imagination to our deepest creativity.
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-- Bene Gesserit Credo
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Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit. This is the fine
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point on which all the legal professions of history have based their job
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security.
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-- Bene Gesserit Coda
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We do not teach history; we recreate the experience. We follow the chain of
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consequences -- the tracks of the beast in its forest. Look behind our words
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and you see the broad sweep of social behavior that no historian has ever
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touched.
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-- Bene Gesserit Panoplia Propheticus
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They say Mother Superior can disregard nothing -- a meaningless aphorism
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until you grasp its other significance: I am the servant of all my Sisters.
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They watch their servant with critical eyes. I cannot spend too much time on
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generalities nor on trivia. Mother Superior must display insightful action
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else a sense of disquiet penetrates to the farthest corners of our order.
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-- Darwi Odrade
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All states are abstractions.
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-- Octun Politicus, BG Archives
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Some never participate. Life happens to them. They get by on little more than
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dumb persistence and resist with anger or violence all things that might lift
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them out of resentment-filled illusions of security.
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-- Alma Mavis Taraza
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To know a thing well, know its limits.
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Only when pushed beyond its tolerances will true nature be seen.
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-- The Amtal Rule
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Do not depend only on theory if your life is at stake.
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-- Bene Gesserit Commentary
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Ready comprehension is often a knee-jerk response and the most dangerous
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form of understanding. It blinks an opaque screen over your ability to learn.
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The judgmental precedents of law function that way, littering your path with
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dead ends. Be warned. Understand nothing. All comprehension is temporary.
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-- Mentat Fixe (adacto)
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Major flaws in government arise from a fear of making radical internal changes
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even though a need is clearly seen.
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-- Darwi Odrade
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Time does not count itself. You have only to look at a circle and this is
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apparent.
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-- Leto II (The Tyrant)
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A major concept guides the Missionaria Protectiva: Purposeful
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instruction of the masses. This is firmly seated in our belief
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that the aim of argument should be to change the nature of truth.
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In such matters, we prefer the use of power rather than force.
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-- The Coda
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The best art imitates life in a compelling way. If it imitates a dream, it
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must be a dream of life. Otherwise, there is no place where we can connect.
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Our plugs don't fit.
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-- Darwi Odrade
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Uproot your questions from their ground and the dangling roots will be seen.
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More questions!
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-- Mentat Zensufi
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Humans are born with a susceptibility to that most persistent and debilitating
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disease of intellect: self-deception. The best of all possible worlds and the
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worst get their dramatic coloration from it. As nearly as we can determine,
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there is no natural immunity. Constant alertness is required.
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-- The Coda
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Give me the judgment of balanced minds in preference to laws every time.
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Codes and manuals create patterned behavior. All patterned behavior tends
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to go unquestioned, gathering destructive momentum.
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-- Darwi Odrade
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No sweeteners will cloak some forms of bitterness.
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If it tastes bitter, spit it out.
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That's what our earliest ancestors did.
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-- The Coda
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Enter no conflict against fanatics unless you can defuse them.
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Oppose a religion with another religion only if your proofs (miracles)
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are irrefutable or if you can mesh in a way that the fanatics accept
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you as god-inspired. This has long been the barrier to science assuming
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a mantle of divine revelation. Science is so obviously manmade.
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Fanatics (and many are fanatic on one subject or another) must know where
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you stand, but more important, must recognize who whispers in your ear.
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-- Missionaria Protectiva, Primary Teaching
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We walk a delicate line, perpetuating Atreides (Siona) genes in our population
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because that hides us from prescience. We carry the Kwisatz Haderach in that
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bag! Willfulness created Muad'Dib. Prophets make predictions come true!
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Will we ever again dare ignore our Tao sense and cater to a culture that hates
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chance and begs for prophecy?
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-- Archival Summary (adixto)
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We witness a passing phase of eternity. Important things happen but some
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people never notice. Accidents intervene. You are not present at episodes.
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You depend on reports. And people shutter their minds. What good are reports?
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History in a news account? Preselected at an editorial conference, digested
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and excreted by prejudice? Accounts you need seldom come from those who make
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history. Diaries, memoirs and autobiographies are subjective forms of special
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pleading. Archives are crammed with such suspect stuff.
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-- Darwi Odrade
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Spend energies on those who make you strong. Energy spent on weaklings drags
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you to doom. (HM rule) Bene Gesserit Commentary: Who judges?
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-- The Dortujla Record
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Ish yara al-ahdab hadbat-u.
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(A hunchback does not see his own hunch. -- Folk Saying.)
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Bene Gesserit Commentary: The hunch may be seen with
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the aid of mirrors but mirrors may show the whole being.
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-- The Bashar Teg
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Religion must be accepted as a source of energy. It can be directed
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for our purposes, but only within limits that experience reveals.
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Here is the secret meaning of Free Will.
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-- Missionaria Protectiva, Primary Teaching
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Our household god is this thing we carry forward generation after generation:
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our message for humankind if it matures. The closest thing we have to a
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household goddess is a failed Reverend Mother -- Chenoeh there in her niche.
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-- Darwi Odrade
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When are the witches to be trusted? Never! The dark side of the magic
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universe belongs to the Bene Gesserit and we must reject them.
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-- Tylwyth Waff, Master of Masters
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Seek freedom and become captive of your desires.
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Seek discipline and find your liberty.
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-- The Coda
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Making workable choices occurs in a crucible of informative mistakes.
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Thus Intelligence accepts fallibility. And when absolute (infallible)
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choices are not known, Intelligence takes chances with limited data in
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an arena where mistakes are not only possible but also necessary.
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-- Darwi Odrade
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Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know.
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-- Zensunni koan
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Answers are a perilous grip on the universe. They can appear sensible yet
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explain nothing.
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-- The Zensunni Whip
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Battle? There's always a desire for breathing space motivating it somewhere.
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-- The Bashar Teg
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Do not be quick to reveal judgment. Hidden judgment often is more potent.
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It can guide reactions whose effects are felt only when too late to divert them.
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-- Bene Gesserit Advice to Postulants
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Looked at one way, the universe is Brownian movement, nothing predictable at
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the elemental level. Muad'Dib and his Tyrant son closed the cloud chamber
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where movement occurred.
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-- Stories from Gammu
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What do Holy Accidents teach? Be resilient. Be strong.
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Be ready for change, for the new. Gather many experiences
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and judge them by the steadfast nature of our faith.
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-- Tleilaxu Doctrine
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When you think to take determination of your fate into your own hands,
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that is the moment you can be crushed. Be cautious. Allow for surprises.
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When we create, there are always other forces at work.
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-- Darwi Odrade
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There's no secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves.
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-- Darwi Odrade
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Paired opposites define your longings and those longings imprison you.
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-- The Zensunni Whip
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