I am not a coward and once I was human.

Thought it would be cool to have a dune quote thread considering Frank Herbert's books have so much information about religion politics and human nature. If you haven't read Dune you're missing out Frank Herbert was a genius.

Here's a couple of my favorite qoutes from Leto II son of Paul Muad'Dib named after his grandfather Duke Leto the first of his name.

You must remember that I have at my internal demand every expertise known to our history. This is the fund of energy I draw upon when I address the mentality of war. If you have not heard the moaning cries of the wounded and the dying, you do not know about war. I have heard those cries in such numbers that they haunt me. I have cried out myself in the aftermath of battle. I have suffered wounds in every epoch-wounds from fist and club and rock, from shell-studded limb and bronze sword, from the mace and the cannon, from arrows and lasguns and the silent smothering of atomic dust, from biological invasions which blacken the tongue and drown the lungs, from the swift gush of flame and the silent working of slow poisons...and more I will not recount! I have seen and felt them all. To those who dare ask why I behave as I do, I say: With my memories, I can do nothing else. I am not a coward and once I was human.
-The Stolen Journals


Most civilization is based on cowardice. It's so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame.

-The Stolen Journals



I know the evil of my ancestors because I am those people. The balance is delicate in the extreme. I know that few of ;you who read my words have ever thought about your ancestors this way. It has not occurred to you that your ancestors were survivors and that the survival itself sometimes involved savage decisions, a kind of wanton brutality which civilized humankind works very hard to suppress. What price will you pay for that suppression? Will you accept your won extinction?
-The Stolen Journals


You can find alot of Dune quotes on wikiquotes. Heres more from Leto II

http://iheartquotes.com/tags/god_emperor_dune

If you don't know who Leto II is he's a kwisatz haderach

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwisatz_Haderach

Basically it's a superhuman that knows his entire genetic past both male and female where as the "Reverend Mothers" who are xx can only see their female past.

His father Maud'Dib or Paul Atreides who was the first Kwisatz Haderach and Leto was the second who found a form of immortality and became known as "The God Emporer".

He had a 3,500 year forced tranquility he called the golden path which was the path he saw humanity needing to take based on his prescience

Safaris through ancestral memories teach me many things. The patterns, ahhh,
the patterns Liberal bigots are the ones who trouble me most. I distrust the
extremes. Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over
any future. Scratch a liberal and find a closet aristocrat. It's true! Liberal
governments always develop into aristocracies The bureaucracies betray the true
intent of people who form such governments. Right from the first, the little
people who formed the governments which promised to equalize the social burdens
found themselves suddenly in the hands of bureaucratic aristocracies. Of
course, all bureaucracies follow this pattern. but what a hypocrisy to find
this even under a communized banner Ahhh, well, if patterns teach me anything
it's that patterns are repeated. My oppressions. by and large, are no worse
than any of the others and, at least. I teach a new lesson.

-The Stolen Journals
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