“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. To begin your study of the life of Maud'Dib, then, take care that you first place him in his time: born in the 57th year of the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV. And take the most special care that you locate Maud'Dib in his place: the planet Arrakis. Do not be deceived by the fact that he was born on Caladan and lived his first fifteen years there. Arrakis, the planet known as Dune, is forever his place.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Men looked at their gods and their rituals and saw that both were filled with that most terrible of all equations: fear over ambition.”
―
Frank Herbert
“You never talk of likelihoods on Arrakis. You speak only of possibilities.”
―
Frank Herbert
“People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Whirling silence settled around Jessica. Every fiber of her body accepted the fact that something profound had happened to it. She felt that she was a conscious mote, smaller than any subatomic particle, yet capable of motion and of sensing her surroundings. Like an abrupt revelation—the curtains whipped away—she realized she had become aware of a psychokinesthetic extension of herself. She was the mote, yet not the mote.”
―
Frank Herbert
“When religion and politics ride the same cart, when that cart is driven by a living holy man (baraka), nothing can stand in their path.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Survival is the ability to swim in strange water.”
―
Frank Herbert
“He doesn’t appear much, does he—one frightened old fat man too weak to support his own flesh without the help of suspensors.”
―
Frank Herbert
“We came from Caladan—a paradise world for our form of life. There existed no need on Caladan to build a physical paradise or a paradise of the mind—we could see the actuality all around us. And the price we paid was the price men have always paid for achieving a paradise in this life—we went soft, we lost our edge.”
―
Frank Herbert
“What is the son but an extension of the father? —”
―
Frank Herbert
“The Fremen have a simple, practical religion,” he said.
“Nothing about religion is simple.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Any man who retreats into a cave which has only one opening deserves to die.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The Fremen have a saying they credit to Shai-hulud, Old Father Eternity,” he said. “They say: ‘Be prepared to appreciate what you meet.’”
―
Frank Herbert
