“The natural human´s an animal without a logic. Your projection of logic onto all affairs is unnatural.”
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Frank Herbert
“When your opponent fears you, then’s the moment when you give the fear its own rein, give it the time to work on him. Let it become terror. The terrified man fights himself. Eventually, he attacks in desperation. That is the most dangerous moment, but the terrified man can be trusted usually to make a fatal mistake. You are being trained here to detect these mistakes and use them.”
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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.”
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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.
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Frank Herbert
“And he thought then about the Guild—the force that had specialized for so long that it had become a parasite, unable to exist independently of the life upon which it fed. They had never dared grasp the sword…and now they could not grasp it. They might have taken Arrakis when they realized the error of specializing on the melange awareness-spectrum narcotic for their navigators. They could have done this, lived their glorious day and died. Instead, they’d existed from moment to moment, hoping the seas in which they swam might produce a new host when the old one died.”
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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.”
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Frank Herbert
“Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part on the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him.”
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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.”
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Frank Herbert
“It should be one of the tests,” the old woman said. “Humans are almost always lonely.”
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Frank Herbert
“The knife is more dangerous than the hand and the knife can be in either hand.”
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Frank Herbert
“the proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence.”
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Frank Herbert
“The mind can go either direction under stress—toward positive or toward negative:”
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Frank Herbert
“A popular man arouses the jealousy of the powerful.”
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Frank Herbert
“I never could bring myself to trust a traitor,” the Baron said. “Not even a traitor I created.”
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Frank Herbert