“it occurred to Kynes that his father and all the other scientists were wrong, that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error
―
Frank Herbert
“Have you heard the latest word from Arrakis?” the Baron asked. “No, Uncle.” Feyd-Rautha forced himself not to look back. He turned down the hall out of the servants’ wing. “They’ve a new prophet or religious leader of some kind among the Fremen,” the Baron said. “They call him Muad’Dib. Very funny, really. It means ‘the Mouse.’ I’ve told Rabban to let them have their religion. It’ll keep them occupied.”
―
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 killer with the manners of a rabbit - this is the most dangerous kind.”
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Frank Herbert
“off in strata of porous rock by the leathery half-plant, half-animal little makers
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Frank Herbert
“What senses do we lack that we cannot see or hear another world all around us?”
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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.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Paul crouched at the ready and, as he had been trained to do after first blood, called out: “Do you yield?”
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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
“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
“Riots and comedy are but symptoms of the times, profoundly revealing. They betray the psychological tone, the deep uncertainties…and the striving for something better, plus the fear that nothing would come of it all.”
―
Frank Herbert
“I have been a stranger in a strange land, Halleck quoted. Paul stared at him, recognizing the quotation from the O.C. Bible, wondering: Does Gurney, too, wish an end to devious plots?”
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Frank Herbert
“The old woman was a witch shadow—hair like matted spiderwebs, hooded ’round darkness of features, eyes like glittering jewels.”
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Frank Herbert
“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” “ ‘Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man’s mind,”
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Frank Herbert
“How the mind gears itself for its environment, she thought. And she recalled a Bene Gesserit axiom: “The mind can go either direction under stress—toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training.”
―
Frank Herbert
