“The struggle between life elements is the struggle for the free energy of a system.”
―
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
“When a Truthsayer's gifted by the drug, she can look many places in her memory - in her body's memory. We look down so many avenues of the past... but only feminine avenues... Yet there's a place no Truthsayer can see. We are repelled by it, terrorized. It is said a man will come one day and find in the gift of the drug his inward eye. He will look where we cannot - into both feminine and masculine pasts... Many men have tried the drug... so many, but none has succeeded."
"They tried and failed, all of them?"
"They tried and died.”
―
Frank Herbert
“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
“Many have marked the speed with which Muad'Dib learned the necessities of Arrakis. The Bene Gesserit, of course, know the basis of this speed. For the others, we can say that Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad'Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.”
―
Frank Herbert
“You have a nicety of awareness of the difference between a blade's edge and its tip.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man’s mind,’” Paul quoted.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is the task of Religion to fit man into this lawfulness.”
―
Frank Herbert
“You shall be known among us as Usul, the base of the pillar. This is your secret name, your troop name. We of Sietch”
―
Frank Herbert
“Better a dry morsel and quietness therewith than a house full of sacrifice and strife.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.”
―
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
“When law and duty are one, united by religion, you never become fully conscious, fully aware of yourself. You are always a little less than an individual.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Umman Kudu: scissors-line of jaw muscles, chin like a boot toe - a man to be trusted because the captain's vices were known.”
―
Frank Herbert