“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
“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
“It should be one of the tests,” the old woman said. “Humans are almost always lonely.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Much that was called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility toward life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eye of God, that knowledge without action is empty. All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you’ve always known.”
―
Frank Herbert
“She looked at patches of blackness. Black is a blind remembering, she thought.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Polish comes from the cities; wisdom from the desert.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.”
―
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
“Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, ‘I am not the kind of person I want to be.’ It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied.”
―
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.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is the task of Religion to fit man into this lawfulness.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Then came the Butlerian Jihad—two generations of chaos. The god of machine-logic was overthrown among the masses and a new concept was raised: “Man may not be replaced.” Those”
―
Frank Herbert
“It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Black is a blind remembering, she thought. You listen for pack sounds, for the cries of those who hunted your ancestors in a past so ancient only your most primitive cells remember. The ears see. The nostrils see.”
―
Frank Herbert
