“Gurney’s a romantic,” the Duke growled. This talk of killing suddenly disturbed him, coming from his son. “I’d sooner you never had to kill…but if the need arises, you do it however you can—tip or edge.” He looked up at the skylight, on which the rain was drumming.”
―
Frank Herbert
“That which makes a man superhuman is terrifying.”
―
Frank Herbert
“She looked at patches of blackness. Black is a blind remembering, she thought.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Three quick breaths triggered the responses: he fell into the floating awareness... focusing the consciousness... aortal dilation... avoiding the unfocused mechanism of consciousness... to be conscious by choice... blood enriched and swift-flooding the overload regions... one does not obtain food-safety freedom by instinct alone... animal consciousness does not extend beyond the given moment nor into the idea that its victims may become extinct... the animal destroys and does not produce... animal pleasures remain close to sensation levels and avoid the perceptual... the human requires a background grid through which to see his universe... focused consciousness by choice, this forms your grid... bodily integrity follows nerve-blood flow according to the deepest awareness of cell needs... all things/cells/beings are impermanent... strive for flow-permanence within...”
―
Frank Herbert
“Sad? Nonsense! Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place.”
―
Frank Herbert
“What is important for a leader is that which makes him a leader. It is the needs of his people.”
―
Frank Herbert
“There is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe. It has symmetry, elegance, and grace - these qualities you find always in that the true artist captures. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, the way sand trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of the creosote bush of the pattern of its leaves. We try to copy these patterns in our lives and in our society, seeking the rhythms, the dances, the forms that comfort. Yet, it is possible to see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. It is clear that the ultimate pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all things move towards death.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free.”
―
Frank Herbert
“I must rule with eye and claw — as the hawk among lesser birds. - Duke Leto Atreides”
―
Frank Herbert
“There is in each of us an ancient force that takes and an ancient force that gives. A man finds little difficulty facing that place within himself where the taking force dwells, but it’s almost impossible for him to see into the giving force without changing into something other than man. For a woman, the situation is reversed…These things are so ancient within us…that they’re ground into each separate cell of our bodies…It’s as easy to be overwhelmed by giving as by taking.”
―
Frank Herbert
“ruling class that lives as ruling classes have lived in all times while, beneath them, a semihuman mass of semislaves exists on the leavings.
―
Frank Herbert
“You see, Count, I have the Emperor’s prison planet, Salusa Secundus, to inspire me.”
―
Frank Herbert
“He who controls the spice controls the universe.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Give as few orders as possible," his father had told him once long ago. "Once you've given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.”
―
Frank Herbert
