“Life produces a different taste each time you take it.”
―
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
“How would we flood village and city with our information? The people must learn how well I govern them. How would they know if we didn't tell them?”
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Frank Herbert
“It is so shocking to find out how many people do not believe that they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.”
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Frank Herbert
“As long as my Duke remains unmarried some of the Great Houses can still hope for alliance.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Arrakis is a one-crop planet,” his father said. “One crop. It supports a ruling class that lives as ruling classes have lived in all times while, beneath them, a semihuman mass of semislaves exists on the leavings. It’s the masses and the leavings that occupy our attention. These are far more valuable than has ever been suspected.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Schools were started to train human talents...
The Guild... emphasizes almost pure mathematics. Bene Gesserit performs... politics. The original Bene Gesserit school was directed by those who saw the need of a thread of continuity in human affairs. They saw there count be no such continuity without separating human stock from animal stock - for breeding purposes.”
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Frank Herbert
“She thought of the boy's features as an exquisite distillation out of random patterns-endless queues of happenstance meeting at this nexus.”
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Frank Herbert
“Sad? Nonsense! Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place.” He glanced at the charts on the table. “And Arrakis is just another place.”
―
Frank Herbert
“... one doesn't need telepathy to read your intentions.”
―
Frank Herbert
“A voice hissed: "He sheds tears!"
It was taken around the ring "Usal gives moisture to the dead!"
He felt fingers touch his damp cheek, heard the awed whispers.”
―
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
“My mother is my enemy. She does not know it, but she is. She is bringing the jihad. She bore me; she trained me. She is my enemy.”
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Frank Herbert
“Now, motivational patterns are going to be similar among all espionage agents. That is to say: there will be certain types of motivation that are similar despite differing schools or opposed aims. You will study first how to separate this element for your analysis—in the beginning, through interrogation patterns that betray the inner orientation of the interrogators; secondly, by close observation of language-thought orientation of those under analysis. You will find it fairly simple to determine the root languages of your subjects, of course, both through voice inflection and speech pattern.”
―
Frank Herbert
“If you rely only on your eyes, your other senses weaken.”
―
Frank Herbert