“Schools were started to train human talents...
The Guild... emphasizes almost pure mathematics. Bene Gesserit performs... politics. The original Bene Gesserit school was directed by those who saw the need of a thread of continuity in human affairs. They saw there count be no such continuity without separating human stock from animal stock - for breeding purposes.”
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Frank Herbert
“Surely not a palm lock, she told herself. A palm lock must be keyed to one individual’s hand shape and palm lines. But it looked like a palm lock. And there were ways to open any palm lock—as she had learned at school.”
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Frank Herbert
“When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong - faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late.”
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Frank Herbert
“Does the prophet see the future or does he see a line of weakness, a fault or cleavage that he may shatter with words or decisions as a diamond-cutter shatters his gem with a blow of a knife? —”
―
Frank Herbert
“I have another kind of sight. I see another kind of terrain: the available paths.
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Frank Herbert
“they’d chosen always the clear, safe course that leads ever downward into stagnation.”
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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
“Can you remember your first taste of spice?” “It tasted like cinnamon.”
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Frank Herbert
“A good ruler has to learn his world's language, and that's different for every world, the language you don't hear just with your ears.”
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Frank Herbert
“Le véritable bonheur, c'était cela. La possibilité de s'arrêter, ne serait-ce que pour un moment.”
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Frank Herbert
“When you imagine mistakes, there can be no self-defense.”
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Frank Herbert
“Whirling silence settled around Jessica. Every fiber of her body accepted the fact that something profound had happened to it. She felt that she was a conscious mote, smaller than any subatomic particle, yet capable of motion and of sensing her surroundings. Like an abrupt revelation—the curtains whipped away—she realized she had become aware of a psychokinesthetic extension of herself. She was the mote, yet not the mote.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Jessica stopped beside him: ‘What delicious abandon in the sleep of a child.’
He spoke mechanically: ‘If only adults could relax like that.’
‘Yes.’
‘When do we lose it?’ He murmured…
‘We do indeed lose something,’ she said.”
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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.”
―
Frank Herbert
