“Muad’Dib: “If a child, an untrained person, an ignorant person, or an insane person incites trouble, it is the fault of authority for not predicting and preventing that trouble. ” O.C.”
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Frank Herbert
“It was a scene of such beauty it caught all his attention. Some things beggar likeness, he thought.
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Frank Herbert
“The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called "spannungsbogen" -- which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.”
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Frank Herbert
“She looked at patches of blackness. Black is a blind remembering, she thought.”
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Frank Herbert
“Our supremacy on Caladan,” the Duke said, “depended on sea and air power. Here, we must develop something I choose to call desert power.
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Frank Herbert
“It's easier to be terrified by an enemy you admire.”
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Frank Herbert
“Ah, Hah! But you see, Baron, I know as a Mentat when you will send the executioner. You will hold back just so long as I am useful. To move sooner would be wasteful and I'm yet of much use. I know what it is you learned from that lovely Dune planet - waste not? True, Baron?
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Frank Herbert
“The knife is more dangerous than the hand and the knife can be in either hand.”
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Frank Herbert
“The meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture—it begins in the dignity with which we treat our dead.”
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Frank Herbert
“Mood’s a thing for cattle or for making love. You fight when the necessity arises, no matter your mood.”
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Frank Herbert
“the proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence.”
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Frank Herbert
“spannungsbogen”—which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing. —”
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Frank Herbert
“Grave this on your memory, lad: A world is supported by four things..." she held up four big-knuckled fingers. "...the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these things are as nothing..." She closed her fingers into a fist. "...without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!”
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Frank Herbert
“A ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel... he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men... a good ruler has to learn his world's language... it's different for every world... the language of the rocks and growing things... the language you don't hear just with your ears... the Mystery of Life... not a problem to solve, but a reality to experience...
Understanding must move with the flow of the process.”
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Frank Herbert
“He’s awake and listening to us,” said the old woman. “Sly little rascal.” She chuckled. “But royalty has need of slyness. And if he’s really the Kwisatz Haderach…well….”
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Frank Herbert