spyked bricks in the wall

brick quote(s), #12

In all major socializing forces you will find an underlying movement to gain and maintain power through the use of words. From witch doctor to priest to bureaucrat it is all the same. A governed populace must be conditioned to accept power-words as actual things, to confuse the symbolized system with the tangible universe. In the maintenance of such a power structure, certain symbols are kept out of the reach of common understanding — symbols such as those dealing with economic manipulation or those which define the local interpretation of sanity. Symbol-secrecy of this form leads to the development of fragmented sub-languages, each being a signal that its users are accumulating some form of power. With this insight into a power process, our Imperial Security Force must be ever alert to the formation of sub-languages.

• „Lectures to the Arrakeen War College” by The Princess Irulan

[…] „Will you slay me, Namri?” It was almost a plea to have the man do it.
Namri took his hand from his knife. „Since you ask me to do it, I will not. If you were indifferent, though…”
„The malady of indifference is what destroys many things,” Leto said. He nodded to himself. „Yes… even civilizations die of it. It’s as though that were the price demanded for achieving new levels of complexity or consciousness.” He looked up at Namri. „So they told you to look for indifference in me?” And he saw Namri was more than a killer — Namri was devious. […]

Natural selection has been described as an environment selectively screening for those who will have progeny. Where humans are concerned, though, this is an extremely limiting viewpoint. Reproduction by sex tends toward experiment and innovation. It raises many questions, including the ancient one about whether environment is a selective agent after the variation occurs, or whether environment plays a pre-selective role in determining the variations which it screens. Dune did not really answer those questions; it merely raised new questions which Leto and the Sisterhood may attempt to answer over the next five hundred generations.

• „The Dune Catastrophe” After Harq al-Ada

What you of the CHOAM directorate seem unable to understand is that you seldom find real loyalties in commerce. When did you last hear of a clerk giving his life for the company? Perhaps your deficiency rests in the false assumption that you can order men to think and cooperate. […] 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.

• „A letter to CHOAM” Attributed to The Preacher

„Oh?” Halleck was actually curious now.
„The Lady Jessica ordered you to differentiate between the wolf and the dog, between ze’eb and ke’leb. By her definition a wolf is someone with power who misuses that power. However, between wolf and dog there is a dawn period when you cannot distinguish between them.”
„That’s close to the mark,” Halleck said, […]. „How do you know this?”
„Because I know this planet. You don’t understand? Think how it is. Beneath the surface there are rocks, dirt, sediment, sand. That’s the planet’s memory, the picture of its history. It’s the same with humans. The dog remembers the wolf. Each universe revolves around a core of being, and outward from that core go all of the memories, right out to the surface.”

Extrase din Frank Herbert, Children of Dune, 1976.