“In politics, the tripod is he most unstable of all structures. It's be bad enough without the complication of a feudal trade culture which turns its back on most science.”
―
Frank Herbert
“There's steel in this man that no one has taken the temper out of...”
―
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
“Do not count a human dead until you’ve seen his body. And even then you can make a mistake.”
―
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
“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
“You cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion. The power struggle permeates the training, education and disciplining of the orthodox community. Because of this pressure, the leaders of such a community inevitably much face that ultimate internal question: to succumb to complete opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing themselves for the sake of the orthodox ethic.”
―
Frank Herbert
“They’ve lost the initiative, which means they’ve lost the war.” Gurney”
―
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
“Another might have missed the tension, but she had trained him in the Bene Gesserit Way - in the minutiae of observation.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans in the finite space of a planetary ecosystem 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 do survive.
―
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.”
―
Frank Herbert
“the proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence.”
―
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
