“And that day dawned when Arrakis lay at the hub of the universe with the wheel poised to spin.”
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Frank Herbert
“Another might have missed the tension, but she had trained him in the Bene Gesserit Way - in the minutiae of observation.”
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Frank Herbert
“You must be always hungry and thirsty.” The Baron caressed his bulges beneath the suspensors. “Like me.”
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Frank Herbert
“We faced it and did not resist. The storm passed through us and around us. It's gone, but we remain.”
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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”
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Frank Herbert
“Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free.”
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Frank Herbert
“It is said in the desert that possession of water in great amount can inflict a man with fatal carelessness.”
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Frank Herbert
“Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.”
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Frank Herbert
“The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called “spannungsbogen”—which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.”
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Frank Herbert
“It doesn't follow that the riots mean permanent hostility toward him.”
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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.”
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Frank Herbert
“want their willing cooperation, Gurney. Those men have experience and skills we need. The fact that they’re leaving suggests they’re not part of the Harkonnen machine. Hawat believes there could be some bad ones planted in the group, but he sees assassins in every shadow.” “Thufir has found some very productive shadows in his time, m’Lord.” “And there are some he hasn’t found. But I think planting sleepers in this outgoing crowd would show too much imagination for the Harkonnens.” “Possibly, Sire. Where are these men?” “Down on the lower level, in a waiting room. I suggest you go down and play a tune or two to soften their minds, then turn on the pressure. You may offer positions of authority”
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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.”
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Frank Herbert
“People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.”
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Frank Herbert
“He found that he no longer could hate the Bene Gesserit or the Emperor or even the Harkonnens. They were all caught up in the need of their race to renew its scattered inheritance, to cross and mingle and infuse their bloodlines in a great new pooling of genes. And the race knew only one sure way for this—the ancient way, the tried and certain way that rolled over everything in its path: jihad. Surely,”
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Frank Herbert