“The knife is more dangerous than the hand and the knife can be in either hand.”
―
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….”
―
Frank Herbert
“Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Never obliterate a man unthinkingly, the way an entire fief might do it through some due process of law. Always do it for an overriding purpose—and know your purpose!”
―
Frank Herbert
“And he thought then about the Guild—the force that had specialized for so long that it had become a parasite, unable to exist independently of the life upon which it fed. They had never dared grasp the sword…and now they could not grasp it. They might have taken Arrakis when they realized the error of specializing on the melange awareness-spectrum narcotic for their navigators. They could have done this, lived their glorious day and died. Instead, they’d existed from moment to moment, hoping the seas in which they swam might produce a new host when the old one died.”
―
Frank Herbert
“There was pain in him - like a blister, all that was left of some lost yesterday that Time had pruned off him.”
―
Frank Herbert
“We Bene Gesserit sift people to find the humans.”
―
Frank Herbert
“On Caladan, we ruled with sea and air power," the Duke said. "Here, we must scrabble for desert power. This is your inheritance, Paul.”
―
Frank Herbert
“One must always keep the tools of statecraft sharp and ready. Power and fear – sharp and ready.”
―
Frank Herbert
“How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him. —”
―
Frank Herbert
“All men beneath your position covet your station,”
―
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
“Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife—chopping off what’s incomplete and saying: “Now, it’s complete because it’s ended here.”
―
Frank Herbert
“He could close his eyes and recall the shouts of the crowds. So that is what they hope, he thought. And he remembered what the old Reverend Mother had said: Kwisatz Haderach. The memories touched his feelings of terrible purpose, shading this strange world”
―
Frank Herbert
