“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The drug’s dangerous, but it gives insight. When a Truthsayer’s gifted by the drug, she can look many places in her memory — in her body’s memory. We look down so many avenues of the past…but only feminine avenues. Yet, there’s a place where no Truthsayer can see. We are repelled by it, terrorized. It is said a man will come one day and find in the gift of the drug his inward eye. He will look where we cannot — into both feminine and masculine pasts. The one who can be many places at once: the Kwisatz Haderach. Many men have tried the drug…so many, but none has succeeded.”
“History is not like some individual person, which uses men to achieve its ends. History is nothing but the actions of men in pursuit of their ends. The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it. A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. To begin your study of the life of Muad’Dib, then take care that you first place him in his time: born in the 57th year of the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV.”
“The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
You well know the weakness there! Shield your son too much, Jessica, and he’ll not grow strong enough to fulfill any destiny. Workingmen of all countries unite!”
“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
“The working men have no country. We cannot take away from them what they have not got. There is probably no more terrible instance of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man — with human flesh. I must rule with eye and claw — as the hawk among lesser birds.”
“Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never persistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man. The theory of Communism may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”
“Do you wrestle with dreams?
Do you contend with shadows?
Do you move in a kind of sleep?
Time has slipped away.
Your life is stolen.
You tarried with trifles.
Victim of your folly.
But every class struggle is a political struggle.”
“A class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increase capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market. Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
“Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeosis epoch from all earlier ones. He who controls the spice controls the universe.”
Tags: communism, dune, fear is the mind-killer, karl marx, politics
Marx usually puts me to sleep – best cure for insomnia I’ve ever found. But with these Dune quotes added in, it’s less boring, with more sandworms. I like it.
It’s true that The Communist Manifesto could really use some livening up, and what better way to grab the reader’s attention than illustrating it with screenshots of Sting as Feyd-Rautha?
I see no difference.
When I was in high school there was a Summer Reading list that we would have to read at least three of each summer. Books that were considered especially challenging were given a star nest to some reason. For some reason Dune had to include the whole original trilogy, and was not given a star. As I love science fiction I did read it, but now I feel like I didn’t. I think I approached it thinking it would be more of a Star Wars thing, rand was unprepared for the political allegory. I also really had a hard time getting through Children of Dune which made me frustrated with how my school’s reading list listed them. I feel like I put them down without getting anything from them and always left out when I see discussions of them.
I probably should have combined it with Marx, who I didn’t read for over a year, and was also sometime very esoteric.
What one gets from reading _Dune_ is the ability to appreciate the Harvard Lampoon’s _Doon_, which is exquisite.
*I must not have fun. Fun is the time-killer. Fun is for inferiors, servants and the help. I will ignore fun. I will work through it. And when the fun is gone only I will remain–I, and my will to win. Damn, I’m good.*
A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.
He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing.
I will take 100 of your warriors and train them. This 100 will train the thousands that remain. When the spice flow stops, all eyes will turn to Arrakis.
MALLORY this is BRILLIANT ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh
So, who ghost-wrote Capital?
I’m trying to do one with the stuff in Marx about land and property, and the delightful, incorrect quote from Thufir Hawat about the insignificance of place, but I’m not smart enough for this game.
It is the slow blow that breaches the shields of the bourgeois.
well this really made Dune more readable for me
Man makes his own history, but he does not make it out of the whole cloth; he does not make it out of conditions chosen by himself, but out of such as he finds close at hand. Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife – chopping off what’s incomplete and saying: ‘Now, it’s complete because it’s ended here.’
Too many Bene Gesserit passages; Marx was obviously a Mentat.
God created Arrakis to train the faithful (to overthrow the bourgeoisie).
God created Arrakis to train the faithful (to overthrow the bourgeoisie).
Stupid that “Children of Dune” and all the rest suck so much. “God Emperor” had such a good opening and characters but Herbert put everything together with maximum ham-fistedness.
I read some of his short stories and, oh my god, are they terrible. “The Santaroga Barrier” isn’t bad, though.
Anyone read “Hellstrom’s Hive” or “The Green Brain”?
Dune constantly made me so angry for a number of reasons. How can we make this evil character even more repulsive? I know! Let’s make him fat! Like, really, really fat! Also gay! Definitely gay, for maximum evil.
Also, the philosophy and poetry struck me as really terrible and masturbatory, with a heaping helping of “You know this philosophy/poetry is really good and deep because the people in this world I created say so!” Just… ugh.
Team sandworm, all the way!
Well, he´s also kind of a pedophile, so there´s that.
Remember, both Feyd and Paul are 15 years old in the first book.
But, yeah, it´s a cheap-shot.
Is it OK that I love this without even reading it? I mean I am reading it now, but I like it already. My opinion is a preemie. Or something.
Don’t worry, they grow up strong.
Is it OK that I love this without even reading it? I mean I am reading it now, but I like it already. My opinion is a preemie. Or something.
Don't worry, they grow up strong.
When I posted this on FB, over a dozen people with PhDs in Religion were awed by its perfection. You may think I am exaggerating, but I am not. We all teach Marx in our theory and method classes, and now we are trying to figure out how to make our students read Dune, too.
When I posted this on FB, over a dozen people with PhDs in Religion were awed by its perfection. You may think I am exaggerating, but I am not. We all teach Marx in our theory and method classes, and now we are trying to figure out how to make our students read Dune, too.