“the drowning man who climbs on your shoulders to save himself is understandable—except when you see it happen in the drawing room.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Even an Emperor may tremble before Muad’Dib, for he has the strength of righteousness and heaven smiles upon him.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Most of the Houses have grown fat by taking few risks. One cannot truly blame them for this; one can only despise them.”
―
Frank Herbert
“When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong—faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thought of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it’s too late.” Paul”
―
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
“You must be always hungry and thirsty.” The Baron caressed his bulges beneath the suspensors. “Like me.”
―
Frank Herbert
“When law and duty are one, united by religion, you never become fully conscious, fully aware of yourself. You are always a little less than an individual.”
―
Frank Herbert
“There’s a Bene Gesserit saying,” she said. “You have sayings for everything!” he protested. “You’ll like this one,” she said. “It goes: ‘Do not count a human dead until you’ve seen his body. And even then you can make a mistake.”
―
Frank Herbert
Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans in the finite space of a planetary ecosystem as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive. —Pardot”
―
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
“You cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion. The power struggle permeates the training, education and disciplining of the orthodox community. Because of this pressure, the leaders of such a community inevitably much face that ultimate internal question: to succumb to complete opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing themselves for the sake of the orthodox ethic.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Mankind has only one science… its the science of discontent.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The natural human´s an animal without a logic. Your projection of logic onto all affairs is unnatural.”
―
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