“You must be always hungry and thirsty.” The Baron caressed his bulges beneath the suspensors. “Like me.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Mood’s a thing for cattle or for making love. You fight when the necessity arises, no matter your mood.”
―
Frank Herbert
“What a dolt my father sends me for weaponry,” Paul intoned. “This doltish Gurney Halleck has forgotten the first lesson for a fighting man armed and shielded.” Paul snapped the force button at his waist, felt the crinkled-skin tingling of the defensive field at his forehead and down his back, heard external sounds take on characteristic shield-filtered flatness. “In shield fighting, one moves fast on defense, slow on attack,” Paul said. “Attack has the sole purpose of tricking the opponent into a misstep, setting him up for the attack sinister. The shield turns the fast blow, admits the slow kindjal!” Paul snapped up the rapier, feinted fast and whipped it back for a slow thrust timed to enter a shield’s mindless defenses.”
―
Frank Herbert
“It was another of the essential ingredients that she felt her son needed: people with a goal. Such people would be easy to imbue with fervor and fanaticism. They could be wielded like a sword to win back Paul’s place for him.”
―
Frank Herbert
“A good ruler has to learn his world's language, and that's different for every world, the language you don't hear just with your ears.”
―
Frank Herbert
“His thoughts were too vague to be described, but they comprehended mysterious elements.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. Something cannot emerge from nothing.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The knife is more dangerous than the hand and the knife can be in either hand.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The people who can destroy a thing, they control it.”
―
Frank Herbert
“But attack can take strange forms. And you will remember the tooth. The tooth. Duke Leto Atreides. You will remember the tooth."
―
Frank Herbert
“The tribal commander must lose no face among those who should obey him. Paul”
―
Frank Herbert
“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
“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
“Leto turned a hard stare at Kynes.
And Kynes, returning the stare, found himself troubled by a fact he had observed here: This Duke was concerned more over the men than he was over the spice. He risked his own life, and that of his son to save the men. He passed off the loss of a spice crawler with a gesture. The threat to men's lives had him in a rage. A leader such as that would command fanatic loyalty. He would be difficult to defeat.
Against his own will and all previous judgements, Kynes admitted to himself: I like this Duke.”
―
Frank Herbert
“There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times to develop psychic muscles.
―
Frank Herbert