“Yes. They’ll call me…Muad’Dib, ‘The One Who Points the Way.’ Yes…that’s what they’ll call me.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The test of a man isn’t what you think he’ll do. It’s what he actually does.”
―
Frank Herbert
“I am like a person whose hands were kept numb, without sensation from the first moment of awareness - until one day the ability to feel is forced into them. And I say "Look! I have no hands!" But the people all around me say: "What are hands?”
―
Frank Herbert
“The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows - a wall against the wind.”
―
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
“If he could smell the pre-spice mass, that meant the gasses deep under the sand were nearing explosive pressure.”
―
Frank Herbert
“When he wanted, he could radiate charm and sincerity, but I often wonder in these later days if anything about him was as it seemed. I think now he was a man fighting constantly to escape the bars of an invisible cage.”
―
Frank Herbert
“He maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals, and a people reverts to a mob.”
―
Frank Herbert
“When your opponent fears you, then’s the moment when you give the fear its own rein, give it the time to work on him. Let it become terror. The terrified man fights himself. Eventually, he attacks in desperation. That is the most dangerous moment, but the terrified man can be trusted usually to make a fatal mistake. You are being trained here to detect these mistakes and use them.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Power and fear," he said. "The tools of statecraft.”
―
Frank Herbert
“they’d chosen always the clear, safe course that leads ever downward into stagnation.”
―
Frank Herbert
“You have a nicety of awareness of the difference between a blade's edge and its tip.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Superb accuracy in water measurement, Jessica thought. And she noted that the walls of the meter trough held no trace of moisture after the water’s passage. The water flowed off those walls without binding tension. She saw a profound clue to Fremen technology in the simple fact: they were perfectionists.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The people who can destroy a thing, they control it.”
―
Frank Herbert