“There's steel in this man that no one has taken the temper out of...”
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Frank Herbert
“You should fear me, Mother. I am the Kwisatz Haderach.”
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Frank Herbert
“It is said in the desert that possession of water in great amount can inflict a man with fatal carelessness.”
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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
“Now, motivational patterns are going to be similar among all espionage agents. That is to say: there will be certain types of motivation that are similar despite differing schools or opposed aims. You will study first how to separate this element for your analysis—in the beginning, through interrogation patterns that betray the inner orientation of the interrogators; secondly, by close observation of language-thought orientation of those under analysis. You will find it fairly simple to determine the root languages of your subjects, of course, both through voice inflection and speech pattern.”
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Frank Herbert
“... one doesn't need telepathy to read your intentions.”
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Frank Herbert
“One must always keep the tools of statecraft sharp and ready. Power and fear – sharp and ready.”
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Frank Herbert
“To accept a little death is worse than death itself.”
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Frank Herbert
“Do not count a human dead until you’ve seen his body. And even then you can make a mistake.”
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Frank Herbert
“I knew Frank Herbert for more than thirty-eight years. He was a magnificent human being, a man of great honor and distinction, and the most interesting person at any gathering, drawing listeners around him like a magnet. To say he was an intellectual giant would be an understatement, since he seemed to contain all of the knowledge of the universe in his marvelous mind. He was my father, and I loved him deeply.”
―
Frank Herbert
“One of the most terrible moments in a boy’s life,” Paul said, “is when he discovers his father and mother are human beings who share a love that he can never quite taste. It’s a loss, an awakening to the fact that the world is there and here and we are in it alone. The moment carries its own truth; you can’t evade it. I heard my father when he spoke of my mother. She’s not the betrayer, Gurney.”
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Frank Herbert
“Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent.”
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Frank Herbert
“Science is made up of so many things that appear obvious after they are explained.”
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Frank Herbert
“They’d never known anything but victory which, Paul realized, could be a weakness in itself. He put that thought aside for later consideration in his own training program.”
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Frank Herbert
“Give as few orders as possible," his father had told him once long ago. "Once you've given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.”
―
Frank Herbert