Unknown

Though billions of human beings have been slaughtered by the thinking machines, we must not call them victims. We must not call them casualties. I hesitate to even name them martyrs. Every person who died in this Great Revolt must be nothing less than a hero. We will write the permanent record to reflect this.

I don’t care how many documents you show me— how many records, or interviews, or damning bits of evidence. I am perhaps the only person still alive who knows the truth about Xavier Harkonnen and the reasons for what he did. I have held my peace for these many decades because Xavier himself asked it of me, because it is what Serena Butler would have wanted, and because the needs of the Jihad demanded it. But do not pretend that your propaganda is accurate, no matter how many League citizens believe it. Remember, I lived through those events. None of you did.

The gravest error a thinking person can make is to believe that one particular version of history is absolute fact. History is recorded by a series of observers, none of whom is impartial. The facts are distorted by sheer passage of time and— especially in the case of the Butlerian Jihad— thousands of years of humanity’s dark ages, deliberate misrepresentations by religious sects, and the inevitable corruption that comes from an accumulation of careless mistakes. The wise person, then, views history as a set of lessons to be learned, choices and ramifications to be considered and discussed, and mistakes that should never again be made.