“The night is a tunnel, she thought, a hole into tomorrow...”
―
Frank Herbert
“And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning 'That path leads ever down into stagnation.”
―
Frank Herbert
“There is no measuring Muad'Dib's motives by ordinary standards. In the moment of his triumph, he saw the death prepared for him, yet he accepted the treachery. Can you say he did this out of a sense of justice? Whose justice, then? Remember, we speak now of the Muad'Dib who ordered battle drums made from his enemies' skins, the Muad'Dib who denied the conventions of his ducal past with a wave of the hand, saying merely: 'I am the Kwisatz Haderach. That is reason enough.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Paradise on my right, Hell on my left and the Angel of Death behind.”
―
Frank Herbert
“My father rules an entire planet."
"He's losing it.”
―
Frank Herbert
“On Caladan, we ruled with sea and air power," the Duke said. "Here, we must scrabble for desert power. This is your inheritance, Paul.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The test of a man isn’t what you think he’ll do. It’s what he actually does.”
―
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
“Men looked at their gods and their rituals and saw that both were filled with that most terrible of all equations: fear over ambition.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Full moon calls thee--
Shai-hulud shall thou see;
Red the night, dusky sky,
Bloody death didst thou die.
We pray to a moon: she is round--
Luck with us will then abound,
What we seek for shall be found
In the land of solid ground.”
―
Frank Herbert
“What is important for a leader is that which makes him a leader. It is the needs of his people.”
―
Frank Herbert
“You must learn to rule. It's something none of your ancestors learned.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.”
―
Frank Herbert
“they’d chosen always the clear, safe course that leads ever downward into stagnation.”
―
Frank Herbert
