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Blood is thicker than water, but politics are thicker than blood. -- Frank Herbert
I see us giving love to each other in a time of quiet between storms. It's what we were meant to do. -- Frank Herbert
All men beneath your position covet your station, -- Frank Herbert
The limit of the law is the limit of enforcement - the real limit of organized society. -- Frank Herbert
You've heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap. there's an animal kind of trick. a human would remain in the trap endure the pain feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind. -- Frank Herbert
I never thought it would be easy to serve God," she said. "I just didn't think it would be this hard. -- Frank Herbert
We never completely escape the teachers of our childhood nor any of the patterns that formed us. -- Frank Herbert
Deceit is a tool of statecraft," Irulan agreed.
"There are limits to power, as those who put their hopes in a constitution always discover," Paul said. -- Frank Herbert
Muad'dib rules everywhere," he said.
"Arrakis is not my destination," she insisted.
"Arrakis is the destination of everyone," he said. -- Frank Herbert
Whether a thought is spoken or not it is a real thing and it has power," Tuek said. "You might find the line between life and death among the Fremen to be too sharp and quick. -- Frank Herbert
But attack can take strange forms. And you will remember the tooth. The tooth. Duke Leto Atreides. You will remember the tooth. -Dr.Yueh -- Frank Herbert
Sietch: a meeting place in time of danger. -- Frank Herbert
There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man - with human flesh. -- Frank Herbert
Enormous problems arise when human mistakes are made on the grand scale available to a superhero ... Heroes are painful, superheroes are a catastrophe. The mistakes of superheroes involve too many of us in disaster. -- Frank Herbert
There is not secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves. -- Frank Herbert
It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future. -- Frank Herbert
But that's the function I expect of you, cousin. It's why I chose you. I'll make it official. I will give you a new name. From this moment, you'll be called Breaking of the Habit, which in our tongue is Harq al-Ada. Come, cousin, don't be obtuse. My mother taught you well. Give me your Sardaukar. -- Frank Herbert
The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action. -- Frank Herbert
Try to hold on to youth and it mocks you while it sprints away. -- Frank Herbert
Madness in method, that's genius -- Frank Herbert
The joy of living, its beauty, is all bound up in the fact that life can surprise you. -- Frank Herbert
Is that the name you wish, Muad'Dib?" Stilgar asked. "I am an Atreides," Paul whispered, and then louder: "It's not right that I give up entirely the name my father gave me. Could I be known among you as Paul-Muad'Dib?" "You are Paul-Muad'Dib," Stilgar said. And -- Frank Herbert
Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible. -- Frank Herbert
When religion and politics ride the same cart, when that cart is driven by a living holy man (baraka), nothing can stand in their path. -- Frank Herbert
When God hath ordained a creature to die in a particular place, He causeth that creature's wants to direct him to that place. -- Frank Herbert
Belief fixes a granular universe and causes that universe to persist. Nothing can be allowed to change because that way your non-moving universe vanishes. But it moves of itself when you do not. It evolves beyond you and is no longer accessible to you. -- Frank Herbert
He felt the inability to grieve as a terrible flaw. -- Frank Herbert
In the view of infinity, any defined long-term is short-term. -- Frank Herbert
Police are inevitably corrupted ... Police always observe that criminals prosper. It takes a pretty dull policeman to miss the fact that the position of authority is the most prosperous criminal position available. -- Frank Herbert
Most discipline is hidden discipline, designed not to liberate but to limit. Do not ask Why? Be cautious with How? Why? leads inexorably to paradox. How? traps you in a universe of cause and effect. Both deny the infinite. -- Frank Herbert
Off in strata of porous rock by the leathery half-plant, half-animal little makers - and -- Frank Herbert
I think you are a little afraid because you suspect what I suspect - that there was no natural disaster. They did it themselves, to themselves."
"If this is their own sad handiwork, ... what are our chances of finding friends among people so much to be feared? -- Frank Herbert
Science is made up of so many things that appear obvious after they are explained. -- Frank Herbert
Laws tend to be temporary over the long haul, Moneo. There is no such thing as rule-governed creativity. -- Frank Herbert
...We Fremen have a saying: 'God created Arrakis to train the faithful.' One cannot go against the word of God. -- Frank Herbert
Clinging to any form of conservatism can be dangerous. Become too conservative and you are unprepared for surprises. You cannot depend on luck. Logic is blind and often knows only its own past. Logic is good for playing chess but is often too slow for the needs of survival. -- Frank Herbert
Law of the Minimum: "The worst potential competition for any organism can come from its own kind. The species consumes necessities. Growth is limited by that necessity which is present in the least amount. The least favourable condition controls the rate of growth." -- Frank Herbert
peace encourages aggressions, thus igniting war. -- Frank Herbert
I remember friends from wars all but we forgot.
All of them distilled into each wound we caught.
Those wounds are all painful places where we fought.
Battles never left behind, ones we never sought.
What is it that we spent and what was it we bought? -- Frank Herbert
Then, as his planet killed him, it occurred to Kynes that his father and all the other scientists were wrong, that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error. -- Frank Herbert
He suspected that any life form that inflicted unnecessary pain tended to find its consciousness eroding. Without consciousness to reflect back upon life, all life might lose its sense of purpose. -- Frank Herbert
My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something cannot emerge from nothing,' he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable 'the truth' can be. -- Frank Herbert
Hard tasks need hard ways. -- Frank Herbert
Religion suppresses curiosity. -- Frank Herbert
Major flaws in government arise from a fear of making radical internal changes even though a need is clearly seen. - Darwi Odrade -- Frank Herbert
Is to attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing Darkness. It cannot be. -- Frank Herbert
Humans have a tendency to complain whenever the old must give way to the new. But change is the natural way of the universe, and we must learn to embrace it rather than fear it. The very process of transformation and adaptation strengthens the species. -- Frank Herbert
What do you despise? By this are you truly known. -- Frank Herbert
A person cries out in life because it's lonely and because life's been broken off from whatever created it. But no matter how much you hate life, you love it too. It's like a caldron boiling with everything you have to have, but very painful to the lips. -- Frank Herbert
Ah! Indeed but! But he consumes too much spice, eats it like candy. Look at his eyes! He might have come directly from the Arrakeen labor pool. Efficient, Piter, but he's still emotional and prone to passionate outbursts. Efficient, Piter, but he still can err.
-Baron Vladimir -- Frank Herbert
The Fremen have a simple, practical religion," he said.
"Nothing about religion is simple. -- Frank Herbert
Government and religion united, and breaking a law became sin. A smell of blasphemy arose like smoke around any questioning of governmental edicts. -- Frank Herbert
The basic lesson of our relativistic universe is that things change. Any power must always meet a greater power. -- Frank Herbert
If we deny the need for thought, Moneo, as some do, we lose the powers of reflection; we cannot define what our senses report. If we deny the flesh, we unwheel the vehicle which bears us. But if we deny emotion, we lose all touch with our internal universe. It was emotions which I missed the most. -- Frank Herbert
Cynicism! That, no doubt is a greater crime than heresy. -- Frank Herbert
All rebels are closet aristocrats. -- Frank Herbert
The dice cannot read their own spots. -- Frank Herbert
Military foolishness is ultimately suicidal. They believe that by risking death they pay the price of any violent behavior against enemies of their own choosing. They have the invader mentality, that false sense of freedom from responsibility for your own actions. -- Frank Herbert
One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp too strongly is to be taken over by power, and thus to become its victim. -- Frank Herbert
If you need something to worship, then worship life - all life, every last crawling bit of it! We're all in this beauty together! -- Frank Herbert
Seeing all the chattering faces, Paul was suddenly repelled by them. They were cheap masks locked on festering thoughts - voices gabbling to drown out the loud silence in every breast. -- Frank Herbert
My brother comes now," Alia said. "Even an Emperor may tremble before Muad'Dib, for he has the strength of righteousness and heaven smiles upon him. -- Frank Herbert
Come, come," the Baron said. "We don't have much time and pain is quick. Please don't bring it to this, my dear Duke." The Baron looked up at Piter who stood at Leto's shoulder. "Piter doesn't have all his tools here, but I'm sure he could improvise."
"Improvisation is sometimes the best, Baron. -- Frank Herbert
Never obliterate a man unthinkingly, the way an entire fief might do it through some due process of law. Always do it for an overriding purpose - and know your purpose! -- Frank Herbert
Sometimes I wonder about Piter," the Baron said. "I cause pain out of necessity, but he ... I swear he takes a positive delight in it."
-Baron Vladimir -- Frank Herbert
The Baron could see the path ahead of him. One day, a Harkonnen would be Emperor. Not himself, and no spawn of his loins. But a Harkonnen. Not this Rabban he'd summoned, of course. But -- Frank Herbert
Always prepare secondary ways of dealing with problems. -- Frank Herbert
You do not beg the sun for mercy.
-Maud'dib's Travail from The Stilgar Commentary -- Frank Herbert
Can you take him, Gurney?" "M'Lord jests! -- Frank Herbert
Revenge is for children and the emotionally retarded. -- Frank Herbert
I succumbed to the lure of the oracle, he thought.
And he sensed that succumbing to this lure might be to fix himself upon a single-track life. Could it be, he wondered, that the oracle didn't tell the future? Could it be that the oracle made the future? -- Frank Herbert
But the universe would not turn backward. It was a great engine projected upon the grey void of nonexistence. -- Frank Herbert
Technology is both a tool for helping humans and for destroying them. This is the paradox of our times which we're compelled to face. -- Frank Herbert
At the age of fifteen, he had already learned silence. -- Frank Herbert
Remember your philosopher's doubts, Miles. Beware! The mind of the believer stagnates. It fails to grow outward into an unlimited, infinite universe. -- Frank Herbert
Fear is the mind-killer. -- Frank Herbert
The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it. -- Frank Herbert
Short-term expediency always fails in the long term. -- Frank Herbert
To be a god can ultimately become boring and degrading. There'd be reason enough for the invention of free will! A god might wish to escape into sleep and be alive only in the unconscious projections of his dream-creatures. -- Frank Herbert
The future remains uncertain and so it should, for it is the canvas upon which we paint our desires. Thus always the human condition faces a beautifully empty canvas. We possess only this moment in which to dedicate ourselves continuously to the sacred presence which we share and create. -- Frank Herbert
Membership in a conspiracy, as in an army, frees people from the sense of personal responsibility. -- Frank Herbert
Do actions agree with words? There's your measure of reliability. Never confine yourself to the words. -- Frank Herbert
You who have defeated us say to yourselves that Babylon is fallen and its works have been overturned. I say to you still that man remains on trial, each man in his own dock. Each man is a little war. -- Frank Herbert
The stakes in conflict do not change. Battle determines who will control the wealth or its equivalent. -- Frank Herbert
Radicals are only to be feared when you try to suppress them. You must demonstrate that you will use the best of what they offer. -- Frank Herbert
I will await below," Stilgar said, "while Idaho makes farewell with his friends. Turok was the name of our dead friend. Remember that when it comes time to release his spirit. You are friends of Turok. -- Frank Herbert
FEAR IS THE MIND-KILLER. FEAR IS THE LITTLE-DEATH THAT BRINGS TOTAL OBLITERATION. -- Frank Herbert
On Caladan, we ruled with sea and air power," the Duke said. "Here, we must scrabble for desert power. This is your inheritance, Paul. -- Frank Herbert
A sing-song of shouts filled the air as the merchants tried to attract buyers. Their voices had that end of the workday lift - a false brilliance composed of the hope that old dreams would be fulfilled, yet coloured by the knowledge that life would not change for them. -- Frank Herbert
Death makes a prophet's voice louder. -- Frank Herbert
A world is supported by four things: the learning of wise, the justice of great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. -- Frank Herbert
One who rules assumes irrevocable responsibility for the ruled. You are a husbandman. This demands, at times, a selfless act of love which may only be amusing to those you rule. -- Frank Herbert
The most terrifying things in the universe came from human minds. -- Frank Herbert
You always know the creative because it is revealed openly. Concealment betrays the existence of another force entirely. -- Frank Herbert
How strange. You're more Gowachin than a Gowachin. -- Frank Herbert
If some crazy bastard tossed you into a lake when you couldn't swim, and you learned to swim like that" - Bickel snapped his fingers - "and you found then you could just keep on going, wouldn't you swim like hell to get away from the crazy bastard? -- Frank Herbert
The oppressed always learned from and copied the oppressor. When the tables were turned, the stage was set for another round of revenge and violence
roles reversed. And reversed and reversed ad nauseam. -- Frank Herbert
You have to appreciate life before you want to preserve it," she said.
"And it's the survivors who maintain the most light and poignant hold upon the beauties of living. Women know this more often than men because birth is the reflection of death. -- Frank Herbert
Life produces a different taste each time you take it. -- Frank Herbert
I know a profound pattern humans deny with words even while their actions affirm it. They say they seek security and quiet, conditions they call peace. Even as they speak, they create seeds of turmoil and violence. -- Frank Herbert
All of history is a malleable instrument in my hands. Ohhh, I have accumulated all of these pasts and I possess every fact - yet the facts are mine to use as I will and, even using them truthfully, I change them. -- Frank Herbert
Infinity? It attracts us like a floodlight in the night. -- Frank Herbert
Try looking into that place where you dare not look! You'll find me there, staring out at you! -- Frank Herbert
Unused power was like a marionette with visible strings, nobody holding them. A compelling attraction: I could make it dance. -- Frank Herbert
Ecology is often confused with environmentalism, while in fact, environmentalism often leaves out the fact that people, too, can be a legitimate part of an ecosystem. -- Frank Herbert
Think of all those experiences, the wisdom they'd bring. But wisdom tempers love, doesn't it? And it puts a new shape on hate. -- Frank Herbert
How would you like to live billions upon billions of lives?" Paul asked. "There's a fabric of legends for you! Think of all those experiences, the wisdom they'd bring. But wisdom tempers love, doesn't it? And it puts a new shape on hate. How -- Frank Herbert
The act of saying that things exist that cannot be described in words shakes a universe where words are the supreme belief. -- Frank Herbert
Prophets have a way of dying by violence. -- Frank Herbert
He realized suddenly that it was one thing to see the past occupying the present, but the true test of prescience was to see the past in the future. Things persisted in not being what they seemed. -- Frank Herbert
Insanity is something like drowning,' said Sparrow. 'You go under; you flounder without direction; -- Frank Herbert
Give me the judgment of balanced minds in preference to laws every time. Codes and manuals create patterned behavior. All patterned behavior tends to go unquestioned, gathering destructive momentum. - Darwi Odrade -- Frank Herbert
Moral decisions are always easy to recognize," Odrade said. "They are where you abandon self-interest. -- Frank Herbert
Our supremacy on Caladan," the Duke said, "depended on sea and air power. Here, we must develop something I choose to call desert power. This -- Frank Herbert
Reason is valuable," he said, "only when it performs against the wordless physical background of the universe." Her -- Frank Herbert
Justice required resort to law and that could be a fickle mistress, subject always to the whims and prejudices of those who administered the laws. -- Frank Herbert
Power tends to isolate those who hold too much of it. Eventually, they lose touch with reality ... and fall. -- Frank Herbert
Muad'Dib: "If a child, an untrained person, an ignorant person, or an insane person incites trouble, it is the fault of authority for not predicting and preventing that trouble." O.C. -- Frank Herbert
They've also sent some incidental things - jewelry for the Lady Jessica, spice liquor, candy, medicinals. My men are processing the lot right now. -- Frank Herbert
Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is the task of Religion to fit man into this lawfulness. -- Frank Herbert
It is said that there is a principle of conflict which originated with the single cell and has never deteriorated. -- Frank Herbert
Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who so survive. -- Frank Herbert
The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand. -- Frank Herbert
It is so shocking to find out how many people do not believe that they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. -- Frank Herbert
The great mass of humankind possesses an unmistakable unit-identity. It can be one thing. It can act as a single organism. -- Frank Herbert
The universe is full of doors. -- Frank Herbert
All around the Lady Jessica - piled in corners of the Arrakeen great hall, mounded in the open spaces - stood the packaged freight of their lives: boxes, trunks, cartons, cases - some partly unpacked. -- Frank Herbert
In my estimation, more misery has been created by reformers than by any other force in human history. -- Frank Herbert
We bribe the Guild with a monstrous payment in spice to keep our skies clear of satellites and such that none may spy what we do to the face of Arrakis. She -- Frank Herbert
To die before coming to the end of willpower, was that not an aristocrat's choice? He -- Frank Herbert
They compose poems to their knives. -- Frank Herbert
Paired opposites define your longings and those longings imprison you. -- Frank Herbert
Without new experiences, something inside of us sleeps. The sleeper must awaken. -- Frank Herbert
the sleeper must awaken -- Frank Herbert
Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken. -- Frank Herbert
A person needs new experiences. They jar something deep inside, allowing you to grow. Without them, it sleeps- seldom to awaken. The sleeper must awaken. -- Frank Herbert
I should've suspected trouble when the coffee failed to arrive. -- Frank Herbert
One of the best things to come out of the home computer revolution could be the general and widespread understanding of how severely limited logic really is. -- Frank Herbert
The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion. -- Frank Herbert
I feed on your energy. -- Frank Herbert
One learns from books and example only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things. -- Frank Herbert
Ready comprehension is often a knee-jerk response and the most dangerous form of understanding. It blinks an opaque screen over your ability to learn. Be warned. Understand nothing. All comprehension is temporary. -- Frank Herbert
As you well know, the secret of community lies in suppression of the incompatible. -- Frank Herbert
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. -- Frank Herbert
The Atreides are known to start late getting there growth. -- Frank Herbert
It was a scene of such beauty it caught all his attention. Some things beggar likeness, he thought. He -- Frank Herbert
The undeserving maintain power by promoting hysteria. -- Frank Herbert
There is the difference between us," he said. "You are God embodied. You walk around within the greatest miracle of this universe, yet you refuse to touch or see or feel or believe in it. -- Frank Herbert
To the east, the night grew a faggot of luminous grey, then seashell opalescence that dimmed the stars. There came the long, bell-tolling movement of dawn striking across a broken horizon. -- Frank Herbert
Religion, too, is a weapon. What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government? -- Frank Herbert
You can't build politics on love," he said. "People aren't concerned with love; it's too disordered. They prefer despotism. Too much freedom breeds chaos. -- Frank Herbert
The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. -- Frank Herbert
Humans are born with a susceptibility to that most persistent and debilitating disease of intellect: self-deception. The best of all possible worlds and the worst get their dramatic coloration from it. As nearly as we can determine, there is no natural immunity. Constant alertness is required. -- Frank Herbert
Riots and comedy are but symptoms of the times, profoundly revealing. They betray the psychological tone, the deep uncertainties ... and the striving for something better, plus the fear that nothing would come of it all. -- Frank Herbert
Paul looked down at the hand that had known pain, and then up to the Reverend Mother. The sound of her voice contained a difference than from any other voicing his experience. The words were outlined in brilliance. There was an edge to them. -- Frank Herbert
Paul took a place in the line behind Chani. He had put down the black feeling at being caught by the girl. In his mind now was the memory called up by his mother's barked reminder: "My son's been tested with the gom jabbar!" He found that his hand tingled with remembered pain. -- Frank Herbert
Pale northern complexion that turned to burn at the drop of a sunbeam. -- Frank Herbert
This is the perspective which you create with your own belief, and beliefs can be manipulated by imagination. You've learned only a limited way of looking at the universe. Now you must make the universe your own creation. -- Frank Herbert
Politics: the art of appearing candid and completely open while concealing as much as possible. -- Frank Herbert
I have been a stranger in a strange land, Halleck quoted. Paul stared at him, recognizing the quotation from the O.C. Bible, wondering: Does Gurney, too, wish an end to devious plots? -- Frank Herbert
Any man who retreats into a cave which has only one opening deserves to die. -- Frank Herbert
Good governance never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders. -- Frank Herbert
The sandy juice of his fears could not be avoided. -- Frank Herbert
A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. -- Frank Herbert
Love is not a mood, but a dynamic way of being. -- Frank Herbert
How ignorant a man can become on a diet of managed history. -- Frank Herbert
I should like friendship with you ... and trust. I should like that respect for each other which grows in the breast without demand for the huddlings of sex. -- Frank Herbert
The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows - a wall against the wind. -- Frank Herbert
The Fremen! They're paying the Guild for privacy, paying in a coin that's freely available to anyone with desert power - spice. -- Frank Herbert
Divide and rule, subdivide and rule even more powerfully, fragment and rule absolutely." "That's -- Frank Herbert
Most deadly errors arise from obsolete assumptions. -- Frank Herbert
I have no fear, for fear is the little death that kills me over and over. Without fear, I die but once. -- Frank Herbert
There will be sadness," Alia intoned. "I remind you that all things are but beginning, forever beginning. Worlds wait to be conquered. Some within the sound of my voice will attain exalted destinies. You will sneer at the past, forgetting what I tell you now: within all differences there is unity. -- Frank Herbert
To use raw power is to make yourself infinitely vulnerable to greater powers. -- Frank Herbert
A killer with the manners of a rabbit - this is the most dangerous kind. -- Frank Herbert
You cannot fix your gaze upon it!
Senses cannot record it.
No words describe it."
-Alia -- Frank Herbert
Good subjects must feel guilty. The guilt begins as a feeling of failure. The good autocrat provides many opportunities for failure in the populace. -- Frank Herbert
Culture! They dispense culture the better to rule. Beauty! They promote the beauty which enslaves. They create a literate ignorance - easiest thing of all. They leave nothing to chance. Chains! Everything they do forges chains, enslaves. But slaves always revolt. -- Frank Herbert
This world has emptied me of all but the oldest purpose: tomorrow's life. I live now for my young Duke and the daughter yet to be. She -- Frank Herbert
It is said in the desert that possession of water in great amount can inflict a man with fatal carelessness. -- Frank Herbert
The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience. -- Frank Herbert
All rebellions are ordinary and an ultimate bore. They are copied out of the same pattern, one much like another. The driving force is adrenalin addiction and the desire to gain personal power. All rebels are closet aristocrats. That's why I can convert them so easily. Why -- Frank Herbert
Better the complexities one thought he knew than the complexities which defied understanding. -- Frank Herbert
I must rule with eye and claw - as the hawk among lesser birds. - Duke Leto Atreides -- Frank Herbert
He looked, from behind, like a fleshless stick figure in overlarge black clothing, a caricature poised for stringy movement at the direction of a puppet master. Only -- Frank Herbert
There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times to develop psychic muscles.
Muad'Dib -- Frank Herbert
Reason is the first victim of strong emotion, Scytale murmured. -- Frank Herbert
He thought: Jessica, mother of Muad'Dib and grandmother of these royal twins, returns to our planet today. Why does she end her self-imposed exile at this time? Why does she leave the softness and security of Caladan for the dangers of Arrakis? -- Frank Herbert
No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero -- Frank Herbert
For now is my grief heavier than the sands of the seas, she thought. This world has emptied me of all but the oldest purpose: tomorrow's life. -- Frank Herbert
Unfortunately most criticism is by poseurs. They use their comments about someone else's work as a platform on which to strike poses. What they're really saying is: "Look at me! Look at me!" -- Frank Herbert
Each of us comes into being knowing who he is and what he is supposed to do.' ... 'Small children know,' Leto said. 'It's only after adults have confused them that children hide this knowledge even from themselves. -- Frank Herbert
There's an unwritten compact between you and the reader. If someone enters a bookstore and sets down hard earned money (energy) for your book, you owe that person some entertainment and as much more as you can give. -- Frank Herbert
I cry for those not yet dead. -- Frank Herbert
The person who takes the banal and ordinary and illuminates it in a new way can terrify. We do not want our ideas changed. -- Frank Herbert
Any path which narrows future possibilities may become a lethal trap. Humans are not threading their way through a maze; they scan a vast horizon filled with unique opportunities. -- Frank Herbert
I am like a person whose hands were kept numb, without sensation from the first moment of awareness - until one day the ability to feel is forced into them. And I say "Look! I have no hands!" But the people all around me say: "What are hands? -- Frank Herbert
There's hope left in these dusty chords. There's a song left in our rusty hearts. We are torn and frayed but love remains. -- Frank Herbert
But you invite ... "
"I invite a bit of military nonsense."
"That's what I ... "
"Duncan, I am a teacher. Remember that. By repetition, I impress the lesson."
"What lesson?"
"The ultimately suicidal nature of military foolishness. -- Frank Herbert
The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance. -- Frank Herbert
If you rely only on your eyes, your other senses weaken (Bene Gesserit axiom). -- Frank Herbert
We can say that Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. -- Frank Herbert
She thought of the boy's features as an exquisite distillation out of random patterns-endless queues of happenstance meeting at this nexus. -- Frank Herbert
What delicious abandon in the sleep of the child. Where do we lose it? -- Frank Herbert
When he wanted, he could radiate charm and sincerity, but I often wonder in these later days if anything about him was as it seemed. I think now he was a man fighting constantly to escape the bars of an invisible cage. -- Frank Herbert
I'm going to rub your faces in things you try to avoid. I don't find it strange that all you want to believe is only that which comforts you. How else do humans invent the traps which betray us into mediocrity? How else do we define cowardice? -- Frank Herbert
I come only to ask a simple question. Is Muad'Dib's death to be followed by the moral suicide of all men? Is that the inevitable aftermath of a Messiah? -- Frank Herbert
First, as to Time: there is no difference between ten thousand years and one year; no difference between one hundred thousand years and a heartbeat. No difference. That is the first fact about Time. And the second fact: the entire universe with all of its Time is within me. -- Frank Herbert
If he could smell the pre-spice mass, that meant the gasses deep under the sand were nearing explosive pressure. -- Frank Herbert
Ideas are most to feared when they become actions, Paul said. -- Frank Herbert
Create or arouse such unbridled forces and you built carnal fantasies of enormous complexity. You could lead whole populations around by their desires, by their fantasy projections. -- Frank Herbert
He understood terrible purposes. They drove against all odds. They were their own necessity. Paul felt that he had been infected with terrible purpose. He did not know yet what the terrible purpose was. -- Frank Herbert
If you believe certain words, you believe their hidden arguments. When you believe something is right or wrong, true or false, you believe the assumptions in the words which express the arguments. Such assumptions are often full of holes, but remain most precious to the convinced. -- Frank Herbert
As long as you believe yourself helpless, you remain helpless even though resolute. -- Frank Herbert
What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do without thinking. Things we do without thinking-there's the real danger. -- Frank Herbert
What does a mirror look at? -- Frank Herbert
There is no escape - we pay for the violence of our ancestors. -- Frank Herbert
I give you the chameleon, whose ability to blend itself into the background tells you all you need to know about the roots of ecology and the foundations of a personal identity -- Frank Herbert
A popular man arouses the jealousy of the powerful. -- Frank Herbert
You should fear me, Mother. I am the Kwisatz Haderach." Jessica -- Frank Herbert
It's very difficult convincing the young of anything. They're born knowing so much. -- Frank Herbert
When a wise man does not understand, he says: "I do not understand." The fool and the uncultured are ashamed of their ignorance. They remain silent when a question could bring them wisdom. -- Frank Herbert
Wild Fremen said it well: Four things cannot be hidden
love, smoke, a pillar of fire and a man striding across the open bled. -- Frank Herbert
Use the first moments in study. You may miss many an opportunity for quick victory this way, but the moments of study are insurance of success. Take your time and be sure. -- Frank Herbert
There was pain in him - like a blister, all that was left of some lost yesterday that Time had pruned off him. -- Frank Herbert
My lungs taste the air of Time,
Blown past falling sands ... -- Frank Herbert
But it's well known that repression makes a religion flourish. -- Frank Herbert
Hittite law emphasized restitution rather than revenge. Humankind lost a certain useful practicality when it chose the other Semitic response - never to forgive and never to forget. -- Frank Herbert
He mastered the inner world while holding the outer in contempt, and this led to catastrophe. -- Frank Herbert
The real universe is always one step behind logic. -- Frank Herbert
There's no such thing as equal justice anywhere. It's unsettling to a society when you try to achieve such a false balance. -- Frank Herbert
Paradox is a pointer telling you to look beyond it. If paradoxes bother you, that betrays your deep desire for absolutes. The relativist treats a paradox merely as interesting, perhaps amusing or even, dreadful thought, educational. -- Frank Herbert
That which submits rules. -- Frank Herbert
Most believe that a satisfactory future requires a return to an idealized past, a past which never in fact existed. -- Frank Herbert
It was a BuSab axiom that all power blocs tended toward aristocratic forms, that the descendants of decision makers dominated the power niches. -- Frank Herbert
Who are the rabble and who are the ruled? -- Frank Herbert
Control the coinage and the courts - let the rabble have the rest. -- Frank Herbert
It could be a work of art among vendettas -- Frank Herbert
Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic. -- Frank Herbert
People want order, this kind or some other. They sit in the prison of their hungers and see that war has become the sport of the rich. That's a dangerous form of sophistication. It's disorderly. -- Frank Herbert
The writing of history is largely a diversion. Most historical accounts distract attention from the secret influences behind great events. -- Frank Herbert
I didn't want to be different.
I wanted to be able to laugh
But I'm sister to an Emperor who's worshiped as a god. People fear me. I never wanted to be feared.
I don't want to be part of history, I just want to be loved ... and to love. -- Frank Herbert
Fear is the mind-killer. Slowly -- Frank Herbert
Does a population have informed consent when that population is not taught the inner workings of its monetary system, and then is drawn, all unknowing, into economic adventures? -- Frank Herbert
God created Arrakis to train the faithful. -- Frank Herbert
How strange that so few people ever looked up from the spice long enough to wonder at the near-ideal nitrogen-oxygen-CO2 balance being maintained here in the absence of large areas of plant cover. -- Frank Herbert
The body, learning a thing is good for it, interprets the flavor as pleasurable - slightly euphoric. And, like life, never to be truly synthesized. -- Frank Herbert
It is another kind of marriage - the marriage of privilege and duty. It is the aristocrat's explanation and his excuse. -- Frank Herbert
Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, 'I am not the kind of person I want to be.' It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied. -- Frank Herbert
When law and duty are one, united by religion, you never become fully conscious, fully aware of yourself. You are always a little less than an individual. -- Frank Herbert
Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain. -- Frank Herbert
There exists no separation between gods and men; one blends softly casual into the other. -- Frank Herbert
There's a Bene Gesserit saying," she said. "You have sayings for everything!" he protested. "You'll like this one," she said. "It goes: 'Do not count a human dead until you've seen his body. And even then you can make a mistake. -- Frank Herbert
Pride overcame Paul's fear. "You dare suggest a duke's son is an animal?" he demanded.
"Let us say I suggest you may be human," she said. "Steady! I warn you not to try jerking away. I am old, but my hand can drive this needle into your neck before you escape me. -- Frank Herbert
Each life creates endless ripples. -- Frank Herbert
Gods need take no responsibility for anything except genesis. Gods accept everything and thus accept nothing. Gods must be identifiable yet remain anonymous. Gods do not need a spirit world. -- Frank Herbert
A creature who has spent his life creating one particular representation of his selfdom will die rather than become the antithesis of that representation -- Frank Herbert
Most humans are not strong enough to find freedom within. Sister -- Frank Herbert
as had happened so many times in the past, for every problem solved a new one was added. Beneath -- Frank Herbert
The one-eyed view of our universe says The one-eyed view of our universe says you must not look far afield for problems. Such problems may never arrive. Instead, tend to the wolf within your fences. The packs ranging outside may not even exist.
- The Azhar Book; Shamra I:4 -- Frank Herbert
A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it. -- Frank Herbert
Law always chooses sides on the basis of enforcement power. Morality and legal niceties have little to do with it when the real question is: Who has the clout? -- Frank Herbert
Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's execution that counts. -- Frank Herbert
Where is the weapon with which I enforce your bondage? You give it to me every time you open your mouth. -- Frank Herbert
My son will wear the title well, the Duke thought, and realized with a sudden chill that this was another death thought. -- Frank Herbert
Any conversation is a unique jazz performance. Some are more pleasing to the ears, but that is not necessarily a measurement of their importance -- Frank Herbert
Caution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding, passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve. -- Frank Herbert
Only gods can safely risk perfection ... it's a dangerous thing for a man. -- Frank Herbert
Piter: Ah-ah, Baron! Is it not regrettable you were unable to devise this delicious scheme by yourself?
Baron: Someday I will have you strangled, Piter.
Piter: Of a certainty, Baron. Enfin! But a kind act is never lost, eh?
Baron: Have you been chewing verite or semuta, Piter? -- Frank Herbert
Listening carefully to the teacher, one acquires an education. -- Frank Herbert
He uses the nice old words so rich in tradition to be sure I know he means it. -- Frank Herbert
Piter spoke to Jessica. "I'd thought of binding you by a threat held over your son, but I begin to see that would not have worked. I let emotion cloud reason. Bad policy for a Mentat."
-Piter De Vries -- Frank Herbert
There is a fundamental tension between science and freedom - no matter how science is viewed by its practitioners nor how freedom is sensed by those who believe they have it. -- Frank Herbert
There's steel in this man that no one has taken the temper out of ... -- Frank Herbert
If you put away those who report accurately, you'll keep only those who know what you want to hear. I can think of nothing more poisonous than to rot in the stink of your own reflections. -- Frank Herbert
The voice of a rebeck echoed from somewhere behind him. The music echoed and echoed until it entered his head, still echoing. It suffused his body and he felt himself to be large, very large, not a child at all. And his skin was not his own. -- Frank Herbert
He who controls the spice controls the universe. -- Frank Herbert
Chani sat back on her heels, submerging her fears in thought as she studied Paul's face. This was a trick she had learned from watching the Reverend Mothers. Time could be made to serve the mind. -- Frank Herbert
Individual human experience is not the overriding control factor in human behavior. The cellular social pattern dominates. -- Frank Herbert
But let us not rail about justice as long as we have arms and the freedom to use them. -- Frank Herbert
People aren't concerned with love; it's too disordered. They prefer despotism. Too much freedom breeds chaos. We can't have that, can we? And how do you make despotism lovable? -- Frank Herbert
The universe does not work by our rules -- Frank Herbert
If wishes were fishes, we'd all cast nets. -- Frank Herbert
Shield!" the old woman snapped. "You well know the weakness there! Shield your son too much, Jessica, and he'll not grow strong enough to fulfill any destiny. -- Frank Herbert
She didn't like the fact that people of both sietch and graben referred to Muad'Dib as Him. -- Frank Herbert
Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept? -- Frank Herbert
But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write. -- Frank Herbert
They learned early that sharing secret or private names was an ancient device for ensnaring a person in affections. -- Frank Herbert
More fool he to let himself become an addict to anything, even to living. -- Frank Herbert
TO THE LADY JESSICA-
May this place give you as much pleasure as it has given me. Please permit the room to convey a lesson we learned from the same teachers: the proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On that path lies danger.
My kindest wishes,
MARGOT LADY FENRING -- Frank Herbert
To suspect your own mortality is to know the beginning of terror, to learn irrefutably that you are mortal is to know the end of terror. -- Frank Herbert
I'll never be a Mentat," he said. "I'm something else ... a freak. -- Frank Herbert
You must learn to rule. It's something none of your ancestors learned. -- Frank Herbert
Malign? I praise him. Death and deceit are our only hopes now. I just do not fool myself about Thufir's methods. -- Frank Herbert
... one doesn't need telepathy to read your intentions. -- Frank Herbert
It is not that power corrupts but that power is a magnet to the corruptible. -- Frank Herbert
Peace demands solutions, but we never reach living solutions; we only work toward them. A fixed solution is, by definition, a dead solution. The trouble with peace is that it tends to punish mistakes instead of rewarding brilliance. - -- Frank Herbert
Only those who recognize the value of war and exercise it have any degree of self-determination. -- Frank Herbert
My father rules an entire planet."
"He's losing it. -- Frank Herbert
Another might have missed the tension, but she had trained him in the Bene Gesserit Way - in the minutiae of observation. -- Frank Herbert
Major flaw in government arise from a fear of making radical internal changes even though a need is clearly seen. -- Frank Herbert
Thinking you knew something was a sure way to blind yourself. It was not growing up that slowly applied brakes to learning (Mentats were taught) but an accumulation of "things I know." New -- Frank Herbert
They say they seek security and quiet, the condition they call peace. Even as they speak they create the seeds of turmoil and violence. -- Frank Herbert
Democracy is susceptible to being led astray by having scapegoats paraded in front of the electorate. -- Frank Herbert
Face your fears or they will climb over your back. -- Frank Herbert
It is not always the majestic concerns of Imperial ministers which dictate the course of history, nor is it necessarily the pontifications of priests which move the hands of God. -- Frank Herbert
People don't vote. Instinct tells them it's useless. -- Frank Herbert
Life improves the closed system's capacity to sustain life. Life - all life - is in the service of life. -- Frank Herbert
The price we paid was the price men have always paid for achieving a paradise in this life
we went soft, we lost our edge. -- Frank Herbert
Jessica, hearing the voices, felt the depth of the experience, realized what terrible inhibitions there must be against shedding tears. She focused on the words: "He gives moisture to the dead." It was a gift to the shadow world - tears. They would be sacred beyond a doubt. -- Frank Herbert
In 1054, the patriarch of Constantinople and the pope excommunicated each other.
That was the end of holiness for both churches. -- Frank Herbert
Can you remember your first taste of spice?" "It tasted like cinnamon. -- Frank Herbert
Pain," she sniffed. "A human can override any nerve in the body. -- Frank Herbert
Most lives are a flight from selfhood. Most prefer the truths of the stable. You stick your head into the stanchions and munch contentedly until you die. Others use you for their purposes. Not once do you look outside the stable to lift your head and be your own creature. -- Frank Herbert
You do not take from this universe, he thought. It grants what it will. -- Frank Herbert
The whole universe sat there, open to the man who could make the right
decisions. -- Frank Herbert
He maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals, and a people reverts to a mob." His -- Frank Herbert
We don't need any more Atreides gods! We need a space for some humanity! -- Frank Herbert
How many times must I tell that lad never to settle himself with his back to a door? -- Frank Herbert
The Duke said: "Paul, I'm doing a hateful thing, but I must." He stood beside the portable poison snooper that had been brought into the conference room for their breakfast. The thing's sensor arms hung limply over the table, reminding Paul of some weird insect newly dead. The Duke's -- Frank Herbert
If you want immortality, then deny form. Whatever has form has mortality. Beyond form is the formless, the immortal. -- Frank Herbert
The difference between sentiment and being sentimental is the following: Sentiment is when a driver swerves out of the way to avoid hitting a rabbit on the road. Being sentimental is when the same driver, when swerving away from the rabbit, hits a pedestrian. -- Frank Herbert
We have a disturbed relationship with our past which religion cannot explain. We are primitive in unexplainable ways, our lives woven of the familiar and the strange, the reasonable and the insane. -- Frank Herbert
Sad? Nonsense! Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place." He glanced at the charts on the table. "And Arrakis is just another place. -- Frank Herbert
He was warrior and mystic, ogre and saint, the fox and the innocent, chivalrous, ruthless, less than a god, more than a man. -- Frank Herbert
Duncan spoke quietly: 'Lucilla, if you touch me again without my permission, I will try to kill you. I will try so hard that you very likely will have to kill me. -- Frank Herbert
If I'd been born in my grandfather's time, I'd have made my grandfather's mistakes. There's no doubt of it. I just don't want to make my grandfather's mistakes today. -- Frank Herbert
Better a dry morsel and quietness therewith than a house full of sacrifice and strife. -- Frank Herbert
Color streamed into a toe of darkness testing the sand. -- Frank Herbert
Where Thufir Hawat goes, death and deceit follow. -- Frank Herbert
We are the people of Misr," the old woman rasped. "Since our Sunni ancestors fled from Nilotic al-Ourouba, we have known flight and death. The young go on that our people shall not die. -- Frank Herbert
Here lies a toppled god.
His fall was not a small one.
We did but build his pedestal,
A narrow and a tall one. -- Frank Herbert
Black is a blind remembering, she thought. You listen for pack sounds, for the cries of those who hunted your ancestors in a past so ancient only your most primitive cells remember. The ears see. The nostrils see. -- Frank Herbert
Moneo has discovered it is pointless to live in the past, impossible to live in the future, and difficult to live in the present. -- Frank Herbert
Law is the ultimate science. -- Frank Herbert
I am a leg of the death tripod that will destroy our foes. -- Frank Herbert
Ah, Hah! But you see, Baron, I know as a Mentat when you will send the executioner. You will hold back just so long as I am useful. To move sooner would be wasteful and I'm yet of much use. I know what it is you learned from that lovely Dune planet - waste not? True, Baron?
-Piter De Vries -- Frank Herbert
The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it. -- Frank Herbert
One must cast off old agonies as a snake casts off its skin
only to grow a new set and accept all of their limitations. -- Frank Herbert
The Harkonnens discouraged investigation of the spice, didn't they? -- Frank Herbert
A voice hissed: "He sheds tears!"
It was taken around the ring "Usal gives moisture to the dead!"
He felt fingers touch his damp cheek, heard the awed whispers. -- Frank Herbert
He doesn't appear much, does he - one frightened old fat man too weak to support his own flesh without the help of suspensors." It -- Frank Herbert
Have you noticed, Stil, how beautiful the young women are this year? -- Frank Herbert
If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual. -- Frank Herbert
To the soul's desires The body listens What the flesh requires Keeps the heart imprisoned -- Frank Herbert
Indeed, it was the Bene Gesserit view that humans were life designed by evolution to create order. -- Frank Herbert
The meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture - it begins in the dignity with which we treat the dead -- Frank Herbert
The singular multiplicity of this universe draws my deepest attention. It is a thing of ultimate beauty.
Leto II -- Frank Herbert
What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises - no matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It's not for fighting. -- Frank Herbert
To stay awake all night adds a day to your life. -- Frank Herbert
The night is a tunnel, she thought, a hole into tomorrow ... -- Frank Herbert
You of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us? What is there around us that we cannot - -- Frank Herbert
And that day dawned when Arrakis lay at the hub of the universe with the wheel poised to spin. -- Frank Herbert
I stood upon the sand of the sea and saw a beast rise up out of the sea ... and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. -- Frank Herbert
Men always fear things which move by themselves. -- Frank Herbert
It is said of Muad'Dib that once when he saw a weed trying to grow between two rocks, he moved one of the rocks. Later, when the weed was seen to be flourishing, he covered it with the remaining rock. "That was its fate," he explained. -- Frank Herbert
Killing with the point lacks artistry, but don't let that hold your hand when the opening presents itself. -- Frank Herbert
And loyalty is a valued commodity. It can be sold ... not bought, but sold. -- Frank Herbert
Once human beings realize something can be done, they're not satisfied until they've done it. -- Frank Herbert
Growth is limited by that necessity which is present in the least amount. -- Frank Herbert
Time could be made to serve the mind. -- Frank Herbert
When I am Weaker Thn You, I ask you for Freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am Stronger than you, I take away your Freedom Because that is according to my principles. -- Frank Herbert
Earth? Golden Age? Stilgar was irritated and puzzled. Why would Paul wish to discuss myths from the dawn of time? -- Frank Herbert
Do not make the error of considering my son a child, the Duke said. And he smiled. -- Frank Herbert
Knowing where the trap is
that's the first step in evading it. -- Frank Herbert
Even in the most barren wasteland, a flower always grows. Recognize this, and learn to adapt to your surroundings.
-Dr. Bryce Haynes (planetary ecologist assigned to study Duneworld) -- Frank Herbert
They'd never known anything but victory which, Paul realized, could be a weakness in itself. He put that thought aside for later consideration in his own training program. -- Frank Herbert
The day hums sweetly when you have enough bees working for you. -- Frank Herbert
The most precious substance in the universe is the spice Melange ... The spice extends life ... expands consciousness ... gives them the ability to fold space ... that is, travel to any part of the universe without moving. -- Frank Herbert
Argument closes off the doors of the senses. It always masks violence. Continued too long, argument always leads to violence. -- Frank Herbert
The test of a man isn't what you think he'll do. It's what he actually does. -- Frank Herbert
The terrain enforced its own rhythms. -- Frank Herbert
is the ultimate science, -- Frank Herbert
Gurney's a romantic," the Duke growled. This talk of killing suddenly disturbed him, coming from his son. "I'd sooner you never had to kill ... but if the need arises, you do it however you can - tip or edge." He looked up at the skylight, on which the rain was drumming. -- Frank Herbert
Science fiction, because it ventures into no man's lands, tends to meet some of the requirements posed by Jung in his explorations of archetypes, myth structures and self-understanding. It may be that the primary attraction of science fiction is that it helps us understand what it means to be human. -- Frank Herbert
What religion and self-interest cannot hide, governments can, Edric said. -- Frank Herbert
For proper government, the tribe must have ways to choose men whose lives reflect the way a government should behave. From -- Frank Herbert
Life cannot find reasons to sustain it, cannot be a source of decent mutual regard, unless each of us resolves to breathe such qualities into it. -- Frank Herbert
Order generally was a product of human activity. Chaos existed as a raw material from which to create order. -- Frank Herbert
They displayed a sophistication in warfare as good as anything he had ever encountered, and he had been trained by the best fighters in the universe then seasoned in battles where only the superior few survived. -- Frank Herbert
Is evolution just another name for God? -- Frank Herbert
Religious institutions perpetuate a moral master-servant relationship. They create an arena which attracts prideful human power-seekers with all of their nearsighted prejudices! -- Frank Herbert
Every religious, business and governmental question has the single derivative: 'Who will exercise the power?' Alliances, combines, complexes, they all chase mirages unless they go for the power. All else is nonsense, as most thinking beings come to realize. -- Frank Herbert
You must be always hungry and thirsty." The Baron caressed his bulges beneath the suspensors. "Like me. -- Frank Herbert
We're afloat in amniotic fluid.' 'How's that?' 'Salt water. It's chemically almost identical with the fluid surrounding an unborn baby. -- Frank Herbert
Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. -- Frank Herbert
To know a thing well, know it's limits; Only when pushed beyond it's tolerance will it's true nature be seen.
-The Amtal Rule -- Frank Herbert
Indeed? Pardon me for not listening further but I am really on an urgent errand. -- Frank Herbert
It is far better to win a battle through skilled leadership and wise decisions than violence and bloodshed. It may not seem as glorious to the uninitiated, but in the end it results in fewer wounds--of any kind. -- Frank Herbert
I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. -- Frank Herbert
We will not run," Paul said. "We'll move with dignity. We'll do what must be done. -- Frank Herbert
A man's flesh is his own; the water belongs to the tribe. -- Frank Herbert
Some never participate. Life happens to them. They get by on little more than dumb persistence and resist with anger or violence all things that might lift them out of resentment-filled illusions of security.
-Alma Mavis Taraza -- Frank Herbert
We tend to become like the worst in those we oppose. -- Frank Herbert
Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife - chopping off what's incomplete and saying: 'Now, it's complete because it's ended here.'
- from Collected Sayings of Maud'Dib' by the Princess Irulan -- Frank Herbert
There's coffee for those who want it,' the Duke said. -- Frank Herbert
There are limits to power, as those who put their hopes in a constitution always discover. -- Frank Herbert
She looked at patches of blackness. Black is a blind remembering, she thought. -- Frank Herbert
There is no real ending. It's just the place where you stop the story. -- Frank Herbert
You have a nicety of awareness of the difference between a blade's edge and its tip. -- Frank Herbert
And those who pray for dew on the deserts edge; shall bring forth the deluge. -- Frank Herbert
Nature does not make mistakes. Right and wrong are human categories. -- Frank Herbert
Words are such gross machinery, so primitive and ambiguous. -- Frank Herbert
If we define Futurism as an exploration beyond accepted limits, then the nature of limiting systems becomes the first object of exploration. -- Frank Herbert
Full moon calls thee
Shai-hulud shall thou see;
Red the night, dusky sky,
Bloody death didst thou die.
We pray to a moon: she is round
Luck with us will then abound,
What we seek for shall be found
In the land of solid ground. -- Frank Herbert
As long as my Duke remains unmarried some of the Great Houses can still hope for alliance. -- Frank Herbert
The eye that looks ahead to the safe course is closed forever. -- Frank Herbert
We are questioning more than the philosophy behind our dependence upon limited and limiting systems. We question the power structures that have grown up around such systems. -- Frank Herbert
Producing perfection from imperfection is, after all, the highest of art forms. -- Frank Herbert
His thoughts were too vague to be described, but they comprehended mysterious elements. -- Frank Herbert
The scarce water of Dune is an exact analog of oil scarcity. CHOAM is OPEC. -- Frank Herbert
Kindness is the beginning of cruelty. -- Frank Herbert
Feints within feints within feints. -- Frank Herbert
War is behavior with roots in the single cell of the primeval seas. Eat whatever you touch or it will eat you. -- Frank Herbert
The assumption that humans exist within an essentially impermanent universe, taken as an operational precept, demands that the intellect become a totally aware balancing instrument. -- Frank Herbert
It is not the present which unfluences the future, thou fool, but the future which forms the present. You have it all backward. Since the future is set, an unfolding of events which will assure that future is fixed and inevitable. -- Frank Herbert
The old woman was a witch shadow - hair like matted spiderwebs, hooded 'round darkness of features, eyes like glittering jewels. -- Frank Herbert
Governments always commit their entire populations when the demands grow heavy enough. By their passive acceptance, these populations become accessories to whatever is done in their name. -- Frank Herbert
Survival is the ability to swim in strange water. -- Frank Herbert
To see eternity was to be exposed to eternity's whims, oppressed by endless dimensions. -- Frank Herbert
must never submit to animals. -- Frank Herbert
He's taking the change well? She asked.
Except for getting a bit overtired. He's excited, but what 15-year-old wouldn't be under these circumstances? -- Frank Herbert
Small souls who seek power over others first destroy the faith those others might have in themselves. -- Frank Herbert
Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind. -- Frank Herbert
Truth suffers from too much analysis.
-Ancient Fremen Saying -- Frank Herbert
Our civilization appears to've fallen so deeply into the habit of invasion that we cannot even obey a simple order of the Imperium without the old ways cropping up. -- Frank Herbert
The unclouded eye was better, no matter what it saw. -- Frank Herbert
Those who would repeat the past must control the teaching of history. - Bene Gesserit Coda -- Frank Herbert
You must teach me someday how you do that," he said, "the way you thrust your worries aside and turn to practical matters. It must be a Bene Gesserit thing." "It's a female thing," she said. -- Frank Herbert
We Bene Gesserit sift people to find the humans. -- Frank Herbert
We have two chief survivors of those ancient schools: the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild. The Guild, so we think, emphasizes almost pure mathematics. Bene Gesserit performs another function. -- Frank Herbert
When strangers meet, great allowances should be made for differences in custom and training. -- Frank Herbert
This moment here is the only observable time and place for us in our universe. -- Frank Herbert
What's a gom jabbar? -- Frank Herbert
Be prepared to appreciate what you meet. -- Frank Herbert
War is the most readily available form of chaos. -- Frank Herbert
It leads to self-fulfilling prophecy and justifications for all manner of obscenities," Leto said. "This ... rhetorical despotism, Lord?" "Yes! It shields evil behind walls of self-righteousness which are proof against all arguments against the evil. -- Frank Herbert
There is only one true wealth in all the universe
living time. -- Frank Herbert
The abyss remains. It is pregnant with all the things yet to be. Ah, what gentle violence! -- Frank Herbert
Intelligence takes chances with limited data in an arena where mistakes are not only possible but also necessary. -- Frank Herbert
The historical system of mutual pillage and extortion stops here on Arrakis," his father said. "You cannot go on forever stealing what you need without regard to those who come after. The physical qualities of a planet are written into its economic and political record. -- Frank Herbert
How easy it was to mistake clear reasoning for correct reasoning! -- Frank Herbert
We are generalists. You can't draw neat lines around planet-wide problems. Planetology is a cut-and-fit science. -- Frank Herbert
In all Things you must appear important. No minor decisions pass through your hands unless they are quiet acts called 'Favors' done for people whose loyalty can be earned. -- Frank Herbert
Behold, as a wild ass in the desert, go I forth to my work. -- Frank Herbert
You can say things which cannot be done. This is elementary. The trick is to keep attention focused on what is said and not on what can be done. -- Frank Herbert
She sleeps in the Waters of Life." Chani -- Frank Herbert
The pursuit of unhappiness is an inalienable right of all humans. -- Frank Herbert
Things could not be forever ordered and formulated. He had to find the rhythm of change and see between the changes to the changing itself. -- Frank Herbert
The surest way to keep a secret is to make someone think they already know the answer. -- Frank Herbert
Silence is often the best thing to say. -- Frank Herbert
My mother is my enemy. She does not know it, but she is. She is bringing the jihad. She bore me; she trained me. She is my enemy. -- Frank Herbert
Then came the Butlerian Jihad - two generations of chaos. The god of machine-logic was overthrown among the masses and a new concept was raised: "Man may not be replaced." Those -- Frank Herbert
I see the signs!" Jessica snapped. "My question was meant to remind you that you should not try to teach me those matters in which I instructed you." Paul -- Frank Herbert
QUESTION: Who governs the governors?
ANSWER: Entropy. -- Frank Herbert
There has never been a truly selfless rebel, just hypocrites - conscious hypocrites or unconscious hypocrites, it's all the same. -- Frank Herbert
Sympathy for the enemy
a weakness of police and armies alike. Most perilous are the unconscious sympathies directing you to preserve your enemy intact because the enemy is your justification for existence. -- Frank Herbert
The thing about computers - it's like training a dog. You have to be smarter than the dog. If you make a computer smarter than you are, that has to be accident, synergy, or divine intervention. -- Frank Herbert
Emotions are the curse of logic. -- Frank Herbert
you can't buy security -- Frank Herbert
It was mostly sweet," he whispered, "and you were the sweetest of all. -- Frank Herbert
When a creature has developed into one thing, he will choose death rather than change into his opposite. -- Frank Herbert
I live in an apocalyptic dream. My steps fit into it so precisely that I fear most of all I will grow bored reliving the thing so exactly. -- Frank Herbert
Paul sat back. He had used the questions and hyperawareness to do what his mother called "registering" the person. He had Kynes now - tone of voice, each detail of face and gesture. -- Frank Herbert
Every civilization must contend with an unconscious force which can block, betray, or countermand almost any conscious intention of the collectivity. -- Frank Herbert
A stone is heavy and the sand is weighty; but a fool's wrath is heavier than them both. -- Frank Herbert
Mankind has only one science ... its the science of discontent. -- Frank Herbert
Don't be so sure you know where to draw the line," he said. "We carry our past with us. And, mother mine, there's a thing you don't know and should - we are Harkonnens." Her -- Frank Herbert
Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect any who seek it. -- Frank Herbert
Ambitions tend to Remain undisturbed by Realities. -- Frank Herbert
They were such seriously futile people that she found herself wanting to cry out against their ready-made justifications for pointless lives. -- Frank Herbert
We will never forgive and we will never forget. -- Frank Herbert
Justice belongs to those who claim it, but let the claimant beware lest he create new injustice by his claim and thus set the bloody pendulum of revenge into its inexorable motion -- Frank Herbert
Some lies are easier to believe than the truth. -- Frank Herbert
That is one of the Law's purposes, of course: to test the qualities of those who choose to employ it. -- Frank Herbert
Something cannot emerge from nothing. -- Frank Herbert
You don't see much of any path unless you are Janus, looking simultaneously backward and forward. -- Frank Herbert
sift people to find the humans. -- Frank Herbert
The best prophets lead you up to the curtain and let you peer through for yourself. -- Frank Herbert
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. -- Frank Herbert
The drowning man who climbs on your shoulders to save himself is understandable - except when you see it happen in the drawing room. -- Frank Herbert
What is justice? Two forces collide. Each may have the right in his own sphere. And here's where an Emperor commands orderly solutions. Those collisions he cannot prevent
he solves. -- Frank Herbert
You have no position from which to negotiate. Certain things will be done. You will comply willingly, your compliance will be forced, or we will act without you. -- Frank Herbert
I don't speak, I operate a machine called language. It creaks and groans, but is mine own. -- Frank Herbert
Guilt starts as a feeling of failure. -- Frank Herbert
Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place. -- Frank Herbert
For what do you hunger, Lord?" Moneo ventured.
"For a humankind which can make truly long-term decisions. Do you know the key to that ability, Moneo?"
"You have said it many times, Lord. It is the ability to change your mind. -- Frank Herbert
The past may show the right way to behave if you live in the past, Stil, but circumstances change. -- Frank Herbert
What matters most is the search itself. This is more important than the searchers. Consciousness must dream, it must have a dreaming ground - and, dreaming, must invoke ever new dreams. -- Frank Herbert
Paul confronted his son then, aiming the eyeless sockets at Leto. "Do you really know the universe you have created here? -- Frank Herbert
Once you've given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject." The -- Frank Herbert
Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous. -- Frank Herbert
Is your religion real when it costs you nothing and carries no risk? Is your religion real when you fatten upon it? Is your religion real when you commit atrocities in its name? -- Frank Herbert
How would we flood village and city with our information? The people must learn how well I govern them. How would they know if we didn't tell them? -- Frank Herbert
All governments needed to remain under suspicion during their time of power including that of the Sisterhood itself. Trust no government! Not even mine! -- Frank Herbert
The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you've always known." There -- Frank Herbert
Balance is what distinguishs a people from a mob. -- Frank Herbert
Money said, "I warn you that ignorance thrives on hysteria. -- Frank Herbert
Failure to make a decision was in itself a decision - he -- Frank Herbert
Time can also be a place ... Everything depends on where you are standing, on where you look or what you hear. The measure of it is found in consciousness itself. -- Frank Herbert
Questions are my enemies. For my questions explode! -- Frank Herbert
All rebels are closet aristocrats. That's why I can convert them so easily. -- Frank Herbert
It must certainly be more dangerous to live in ignorance than to live with knowledge. -- Frank Herbert
Your own emperor bestowed Arrakis on House Atreides. I am House Atreides. The -- Frank Herbert
You must teach me the way you thrust your worries aside and turn to practical matters. -- Frank Herbert
Idaho focused on her face. "Would you like me to impregnate you?" he asked. -- Frank Herbert
CHOAM is business and business follows profits. -- Frank Herbert
Abandon certainty! That's life's deepest command. That's what life's all about. We're a probe into the unknown, into the uncertain. Why can't you hear Muad'Dib? If certainty is knowing absolutely an absolute future, then that's only death disguised! Such a future becomes now! -- Frank Herbert
I began with love and prayer," Moneo said. "I changed to anger and rebellion. I was transformed into what you see before you. I recognize my duty and I do it. -- Frank Herbert
When we encounter personal problems, those things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. -- Frank Herbert
If there is a difference between what is said and what is done, only a fool believes what was said. -- Frank Herbert
In the wrong hands," Leto said, "monolithic centralized power is a dangerous and volatile instrument." - "And your hands are the right ones? -- Frank Herbert
Learning a language represents training in the delusions of that language. -- Frank Herbert
To exist is to stand out, away from the background," The Preacher said. "You aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgment of your existence. -- Frank Herbert
You see, Count, I have the Emperor's prison planet, Salusa Secundus, to inspire me. The -- Frank Herbert
Humans live best when each has his own place, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things. Destroy the place and destroy the person. -- Frank Herbert
I am a collection of the obsolete, a relic of the damned, of the lost and strayed. I am the waylaid pieces of history which sank out of sight in all of our pasts. Such an accumulation of riffraff has never before been imagined. -- Frank Herbert
am a collection of the obsolete, a relic of the damned, of the lost and strayed. I am the waylaid pieces of history which sank out of sight in all of our pasts. -- Frank Herbert
I'm the well-trained fruit tree. Full of well-trained feelings and abilities and all of them grafted onto me -- Frank Herbert
Time is a measure of space, just as a range-finder is a measure of space, but measuring locks us into the place we measure. -- Frank Herbert
He could close his eyes and recall the shouts of the crowds. So that is what they hope, he thought. And he remembered what the old Reverend Mother had said: Kwisatz Haderach. The memories touched his feelings of terrible purpose, shading this strange world -- Frank Herbert
Memory never recaptures reality. Memory reconstructs. All reconstructions change the original, becoming external frames of reference that inevitably fall short. -- Frank Herbert
History is a constant race between invention and catastrophe. Education helps but it's never enough. You also must run. -- Frank Herbert
Historians exercise great power and some of them know it. They recreate the past, changing it to fit their own interpretations. Thus, they change the future as well. -- Frank Herbert
Don't sit with your back to any doors. -- Frank Herbert
Journalism is the entertainment business. -- Frank Herbert
What I'm saying in my books boils down to this: Mine religion for what is good and avoid what is deleterious. Don't condemn people who need it. Be very careful when that need becomes fanatical. -- Frank Herbert
I never could bring myself to trust a traitor," the Baron said. "Not even a traitor I created. -- Frank Herbert
Never attempt to reason with people who know they are right! -- Frank Herbert
To be sighted in the land of the blind carries its own perils. -- Frank Herbert
Gurney says there's no artistry in killing with the tip, that it should be done with the edge. -- Frank Herbert
Do as she says, you wormfaced, crawling, sand-brained piece of lizard turd! -- Frank Herbert
I have another kind of sight. I see another kind of terrain: the available paths. The -- Frank Herbert
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty. -- Frank Herbert
His voice was low, charged with unspeakable adjectives. -- Frank Herbert
When you imagine mistakes, there can be no self-defense. -- Frank Herbert
That which makes a man superhuman is terrifying. -- Frank Herbert
I'm the well-trained fruit tree, he thought. Full of well-trained feelings and abilities and all of them grafted onto me - all bearing for someone else to pick. -- Frank Herbert
Mood's a thing for cattle or for making love. You fight when the necessity arises, no matter your mood. -- Frank Herbert
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. -- Frank Herbert
And he thought: I'm a seed.
He suddenly saw how fertile was the ground into which he had fallen, and with this realization, the terrible purpose filled him, creeping through the empty places within, threatening to choke him with grief. -- Frank Herbert
You are a child seeking to be a man. When you are a man, you will seek in vain for the child you were. -- Frank Herbert
They were undoubtedbly sincere in subscribing to the argument that nuclear weapons were a reserve held for one purpose: defense of humankind should a threatening 'other intelligence' ever be encountered. -- Frank Herbert
Maker - their word for worm, -- Frank Herbert
Privilege becomes arrogance. Arrogance promotes injustice. The seeds of ruin blossom. -- Frank Herbert
Wealth is a tool of freedom, but the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery. -- Frank Herbert
Where is Alia?' she asked.
'Out doing what any good Fremen child should be doing in such times,' Paul said. 'She's killing enemy wounded ... -- Frank Herbert
Umman Kudu: scissors-line of jaw muscles, chin like a boot toe - a man to be trusted because the captain's vices were known. -- Frank Herbert
Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual.
-Words of Muad'dib by Princess Irulan. -- Frank Herbert
Once more the drama begins.' - The Emperor Paul Muad'dib on his ascension to the Lion Throne. -- Frank Herbert
A storm is coming; our storm. Emperor - we come for you! -- Frank Herbert
There are many degrees of sight and many degrees of blindness. What senses do we lack that we cannot see another world all around us? -- Frank Herbert
The mind goes on working no matter how we try to hold it back. -- Frank Herbert
Too Much Knowledge never makes for Simple Decisions. -- Frank Herbert
Myths are not fiction, but history seen with a poet's eyes and recounted in a poet's terms. -- Frank Herbert
A bad administrator is more concerned with reports than with decisions. He wants the hard record which he can display as an excuse for his errors. -- Frank Herbert
Power and fear," he said. "The tools of statecraft. -- Frank Herbert
How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him. -- Frank Herbert
How do you call among you the little mouse, the mouse that jumps?" Paul asked, remembering the pop-hop of motion at Tuono Basin. He illustrated with one hand. A chuckle sounded through the troop. "We call that one muad'dib," Stilgar said. Jessica -- Frank Herbert
Perverts don't perpetuate! -- Frank Herbert
There are problems in this universe for which there are no answers. Nothing. Nothing can be done. -- Frank Herbert
It has occurred to me more than once that holy boredom is good and sufficient reason for the invention of free will. -- Frank Herbert
You know it's love when you want to give joy and damn the consequences. -- Frank Herbert