“But it's well known that repression makes a religion flourish.”
―
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
“Use the first moments in study. You may miss many an opportunity for quick victory this way, but the moments of study are insurance of success. Take your time and be sure.”
―
Frank Herbert
“She thought of the boy’s features as an exquisite distillation out of random patterns—endless queues of happenstance meeting at this nexus.”
―
Frank Herbert
“You see, gentlemen, they have something to die for. They've discovered they're a people. They're awakening.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Are you already training my replacement? Piter demanded.
"Replace you? Why, Piter, where could I find another Mentat with your cunning and venom?"
"The same place you found me, Baron."
"Perhaps I should at that," the Baron mused. "You do seem a bit unstable lately. And the spice you eat!"
"Are my pleasures too expensive, Baron? Do you object to them?"
"My dear Piter, your pleasures are what tie you to me. How could I object to that?”
―
Frank Herbert
“The real wealth of a planet is in its landscape, how we take part in that basic source of civilization- agriculture.”
―
Frank Herbert
“You have a nicety of awareness of the difference between a blade's edge and its tip.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Do not count a human dead until you’ve seen his body. And even then you can make a mistake.”
―
Frank Herbert
“It's easier to be terrified by an enemy you admire.”
―
Frank Herbert
“How strange that so few people ever looked up from the spice long enough to wonder at the near-ideal nitrogen-oxygen-CO2 balance being maintained here in the absence of large areas of plant cover.”
―
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
“Prophecy and prescience—How can they be put to the test in the face of the unanswered question? Consider: How much is actual prediction of the “wave form” (as Muad’Dib referred to his vision-image) and how much is the prophet shaping the future to fit the prophecy? What of the harmonics inherent in the act of prophecy? Does the prophet see the future or does he see a line of weakness, a fault or cleavage that he may shatter with words or decisions as a diamond-cutter shatters his gem with a blow of a knife?”
―
Frank Herbert
