“Shield!” the old woman snapped. “You well know the weakness there! Shield your son too much, Jessica, and he’ll not grow strong enough to fulfill any destiny.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Even an Emperor may tremble before Muad’Dib, for he has the strength of righteousness and heaven smiles upon him.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Arrakis is a one-crop planet,” his father said. “One crop. It supports a ruling class that lives as ruling classes have lived in all times while, beneath them, a semihuman mass of semislaves exists on the leavings. It’s the masses and the leavings that occupy our attention. These are far more valuable than has ever been suspected.”
―
Frank Herbert
“It's easier to be terrified by an enemy you admire.”
―
Frank Herbert
“You never talk of likelihoods on Arrakis. You speak only of possibilities.”
―
Frank Herbert
“If he could smell the pre-spice mass, that meant the gasses deep under the sand were nearing explosive pressure.”
―
Frank Herbert
“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's 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
“A duke's son MUST know about poisons. It's the way of our times.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man’s mind,’” Paul quoted.”
―
Frank Herbert
“A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people. He maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals, and a people reverts to a mob.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Do not make the error of considering my son a child,” the Duke said. And he smiled.”
―
Frank Herbert
“He realized suddenly that it was one thing to see the past occupying the present, but the true test of prescience was to see the past in the future. Things persisted in not being what they seemed.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Paul crouched at the ready and, as he had been trained to do after first blood, called out: “Do you yield?”
―
Frank Herbert