“Our civilization appears to’ve fallen so deeply into the habit of invasion that we cannot even obey a simple order of the Imperium without the old ways cropping up.”
―
Frank Herbert
“His plan has good points and bad points...as any plan would at this stage. A plan depends as much upon execution as it does upon concept.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Umman Kudu: scissors-line of jaw muscles, chin like a boot toe - a man to be trusted because the captain's vices were known.”
―
Frank Herbert
“When a Truthsayer's gifted by the drug, she can look many places in her memory - in her body's memory. We look down so many avenues of the past... but only feminine avenues... Yet there's a place no Truthsayer can see. We are repelled by it, terrorized. It is said a man will come one day and find in the gift of the drug his inward eye. He will look where we cannot - into both feminine and masculine pasts... Many men have tried the drug... so many, but none has succeeded."
"They tried and failed, all of them?"
"They tried and died.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Shield!” the old woman snapped. “You well know the weakness there! Shield your son too much, Jessica, and he’ll not grow strong enough to fulfill any destiny.”
―
Frank Herbert
“I am a leg of the death tripod that will destroy our foes.”
―
Frank Herbert
“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 have always known.”
―
Frank Herbert
“THE DUKE Leto Atreides leaned against a parapet of the landing control tower outside Arrakeen. The night’s first moon, an oblate silver coin, hung well above the southern horizon. Beneath it, the jagged cliffs of the Shield Wall shone like parched icing through a dust haze. To his left, the lights of Arrakeen glowed in the haze—yellow . . . white . . . blue.”
―
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
“Paul swallowed. He felt that he played a part already played over countless times in his mind…yet…there were differences. He could see himself perched on a dizzying summit, having experienced much and possessed of a profound store of knowledge, but all around him was abyss. And again he remembered the vision of fanatic legions following the green and black banner of the Atreides, pillaging and burning across the universe in the name of their prophet Muad’Dib. That must not happen, he told himself.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it.”
―
Frank Herbert
“He understood terrible purposes. They drove against all odds. They were their own necessity. Paul felt that he had been infected with terrible purpose. He did not know yet what the terrible purpose was.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The mind can go either direction under stress—toward positive or toward negative:”
―
Frank Herbert
“People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.”
―
Frank Herbert
“To accept a little death is worse than death itself.”
―
Frank Herbert
