Quotes About Navigators

The Guild navigators, gifted with limited prescience, had made the fatal decision: they'd chosen always the clear, safe course that leads ever downward into stagnation.

Talvez seja por isso que os navegadores navegam: porque no perigo e no abismo eles veem refletida a eternidade.

Like many astronomers who use the great telescopes on Mauna Kea, I have participated personally and joyfully in ceremonies to celebrate the profound cosmic understanding that comes from joining ancient Hawaiian navigator traditions with the techniques of modern astronomy.

Contrary to popular belief, Navigators did not themselves fold space; the Holtzman engines did that. They used their limited prescience to choose safe paths to travel. A ship could move through the void without a Navigator's guidance, but that perilous guessing game invariably led to disaster. A Guild Navigator did not guarantee a safe journey—but he vastly improved the odds. Problems still arose when unforeseen events occurred.

The Spacing Guild has worked for centuries to surround our elite Navigators with mystique. They are revered, from the lowest Pilot to the most talented Steersman. They live in tanks of spice gas, see all paths through space and time, guide ships to the far reaches of the Imperium. But no one knows the human cost of becoming a Navigator. We must keep this a secret, for if they really knew the truth, they would pity us.

The Spacing Guild needed vast amounts of melange to fill the enclosed chambers of their mutated Navigators. He himself, and all the upper classes in the Empire, needed daily (and increasing) doses of melange to maintain their vitality and to extend their lives. The Bene Gesserit Sisterhood needed it in their training to create more Reverend Mothers. Mentats needed it for mental focus.

Traditionally, Guild Navigators masked their appearance, keeping themselves hidden in thick clouds of spice gas. It was generally believed that the process of becoming a Navigator transformed a person into something other than human, something more evolved. The Guild said nothing to confirm or deny the speculations.

To emphasize the heroism of Columbus and his successors as navigators and discoverers, and to deemphasize their genocide, is not a technical necessity but an ideological choice. It serves—unwittingly—to justify what was done.

If the fridge did sink, it would also be a considerable inconvenience to bathers who would have to learn the exact position of the wrecked fridge or risk the agony of their toes ramming into its rusting metal shell. In the future, it might even appear on naval charts of these waters, novitiate navigators baffled by the small white cuboid marked as a hazard just off the shore.

The men of Sidon and Arvad were your oarsmen. Your men of skill, O Tyre, were there as your captains.