“Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it’s a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The Atreides are known to start late getting there growth.”
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Frank Herbert
“He maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals, and a people reverts to a mob.”
―
Frank Herbert
“And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning 'That path leads ever down into stagnation.”
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Frank Herbert
“There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times to develop psychic muscles.
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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
“Is that the name you wish, Muad’Dib?” Stilgar asked. “I am an Atreides,” Paul whispered, and then louder: “It’s not right that I give up entirely the name my father gave me. Could I be known among you as Paul-Muad’Dib?” “You are Paul-Muad’Dib,” Stilgar said.
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Frank Herbert
“There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man—with human flesh. —FROM “COLLECTED SAYINGS OF MUAD’DIB” BY THE PRINCESS IRULAN”
―
Frank Herbert
“She’s the One all right,” she muttered. “Poor thing.”
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Frank Herbert
“It should be one of the tests,” the old woman said. “Humans are almost always lonely.”
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Frank Herbert
“It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.”
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Frank Herbert
“The thing the ecologically illiterate don't realise about an ecosystem 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, 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.”
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Frank Herbert
“My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality.”
―
Frank Herbert