“You shall be known among us as Usul, the base of the pillar. This is your secret name, your troop name. We of Sietch”
―
Frank Herbert
“The clock there had not been properly adjusted to local time, and she had to subtract twenty-one minutes to determine that it was about 2 A.M.
―
Frank Herbert
“There's an internally recognized beauty of motion and balance on any man-healthy planet,' Kynes said. 'You see in this beauty a dynamic stabilizing effect essential to all life. It's aim is simple: to maintain and produce coordinated patterns of greater and greater diversity. Life improves the closed system's capacity to sustain life. Life - all life - is in the service of life. Necessary nutrients are made available to life by life in greater and greater richness as the diversity of life increases. The entire landscape comes alive, filled with relationships and relationships within relationships.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Paul sat silently in the darkness, a single stark thought dominating his awareness: 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.”
―
Frank Herbert
“it occurred to Kynes that his father and all the other scientists were wrong, that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error
―
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.”
―
Frank Herbert
“I will await below,” Stilgar said, “while Idaho makes farewell with his friends. Turok was the name of our dead friend. Remember that when it comes time to release his spirit. You are friends of Turok.”
―
Frank Herbert
“the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error
―
Frank Herbert
“It occurred to her that mercy was the ability to stop, if only for a moment. There was no mercy where there could be no stopping.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The struggle between life elements is the struggle for the free energy of a system.”
―
Frank Herbert
“One must always keep the tools of statecraft sharp and ready. Power and fear – sharp and ready.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The thing the ecologically illiterate don’t realize about an ecosystem,” Kynes said, “is that it’s a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche. A system has order, a flowing from point to point. If something dams that flow, order collapses. The untrained might miss that collapse until it was too late. That’s why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.”
―
Frank Herbert
“He straightened, assuming an odd attitude of dignity – as though it were another mask.”
―
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
“You must learn to rule. It's something none of your ancestors learned.”
―
Frank Herbert
