“My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something cannot emerge from nothing,' he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable 'the truth' can be.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door.”
―
Frank Herbert
“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.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Any man who retreats into a cave which has only one opening deserves to die.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows—a wall against the wind. This is the willow’s purpose.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Ah! Indeed but! But he consumes too much spice, eats it like candy. Look at his eyes! He might have come directly from the Arrakeen labor pool. Efficient, Piter, but he's still emotional and prone to passionate outbursts. Efficient, Piter, but he still can err.
-Baron Vladimir”
―
Frank Herbert
“You have a nicety of awareness of the difference between a blade's edge and its tip.”
―
Frank Herbert
“They’ve lost the initiative, which means they’ve lost the war.” Gurney”
―
Frank Herbert
“Life produces a different taste each time you take it.”
―
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
“He found that he no longer could hate the Bene Gesserit or the Emperor or even the Harkonnens. They were all caught up in the need of their race to renew its scattered inheritance, to cross and mingle and infuse their bloodlines in a great new pooling of genes. And the race knew only one sure way for this—the ancient way, the tried and certain way that rolled over everything in its path: jihad. Surely,”
―
Frank Herbert
“I should've suspected trouble when the coffee failed to arrive.”
―
Frank Herbert
“If he could smell the pre-spice mass, that meant the gasses deep under the sand were nearing explosive pressure.”
―
Frank Herbert
“There's steel in this man that no one has taken the temper out of...”
―
Frank Herbert
“The Duke said: “Paul, I’m doing a hateful thing, but I must.” He stood beside the portable poison snooper that had been brought into the conference room for their breakfast. The thing’s sensor arms hung limply over the table, reminding Paul of some weird insect newly dead. The Duke’s”
―
Frank Herbert