“Prophecy and prescience—How can they be put to the test in the face of the unanswered question? Consider: How much is actual prediction of the “wave form” (as Muad’Dib referred to his vision-image) and how much is the prophet shaping the future to fit the prophecy? What of the harmonics inherent in the act of prophecy? 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
“Piter spoke to Jessica. "I'd thought of binding you by a threat held over your son, but I begin to see that would not have worked. I let emotion cloud reason. Bad policy for a Mentat.”
―
Frank Herbert
“I see us giving love to each other in a time of quiet between storms. It's what we were meant to do.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The eye that looks ahead to the safe course is closed forever.”
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Frank Herbert
“he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning “That path leads ever down into stagnation.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture—it begins in the dignity with which we treat our dead.”
―
Frank Herbert
“I see the signs!” Jessica snapped. “My question was meant to remind you that you should not try to teach me those matters in which I instructed you.” Paul”
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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
“The thing the ecologically illiterate don't realise about an ecosystem is that it's a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche. A system has order, flowing from point to point. If something dams that flow, order collapses. The untrained might miss that collapse until it was too late. That's why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.”
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Frank Herbert
“Muad’Dib: “If a child, an untrained person, an ignorant person, or an insane person incites trouble, it is the fault of authority for not predicting and preventing that trouble. ” O.C.”
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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.”
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Frank Herbert
“Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.”
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Frank Herbert
“Paradise on my right, Hell on my left and the Angel of Death behind.”
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Frank Herbert
“Paul sat down where Hawat had been, straightened the papers. One more day here, he thought. He looked around the room. We’re leaving. The idea of departure was suddenly more real to him than it had ever been before. He recalled another thing the old woman had said about a world being the sum of many things—the people, the dirt, the growing things, the moons, the tides, the suns—the unknown sum called nature, a vague summation without any sense of the now. And he wondered: What is the now?”
―
Frank Herbert
