“Most of the Houses have grown fat by taking few risks. One cannot truly blame them for this; one can only despise them.”
―
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
“And 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
“It is said in the desert that possession of water in great amount can inflict a man with fatal carelessness.”
―
Frank Herbert
“It occurred to her that mercy was the ability to stop, if only for a moment. There was no mercy where there could be no stopping.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The thing the ecologically illiterate don't realise about an ecosystem is that it's a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche. A system has order, flowing from point to point. If something dams that flow, order collapses. The untrained might miss that collapse until it was too late. That's why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Paul shrugged. “Then she said a good ruler has to learn his world’s language, that it’s different for every world. And I thought she meant they didn’t speak Galach on Arrakis, but she said that wasn’t it at all. She said she meant the language of the rocks and growing things, the language you don’t hear just with your ears. And I said that’s what Dr. Yueh calls the Mystery of Life.” Hawat chuckled. “How’d that sit with her?” “I think she got mad. She said the mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”
―
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
“The real universe is always one step behind logic.”
―
Frank Herbert
“A world is supported by four things….” She held up four big-knuckled fingers. “…the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing….” She closed her fingers into a fist. “…without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that”
―
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
“But attack can take strange forms. And you will remember the tooth. The tooth. Duke Leto Atreides. You will remember the tooth."
―
Frank Herbert
“Your own emperor bestowed Arrakis on House Atreides. I am House Atreides.” The”
―
Frank Herbert
“I’ll never be a Mentat,” he said. “I’m something else…a freak.”
―
Frank Herbert
