“Malign? I praise him. Death and deceit are our only hopes now. I just do not fool myself about Thufir’s methods.”
―
Frank Herbert
“they’d chosen always the clear, safe course that leads ever downward into stagnation.”
―
Frank Herbert
“What is important for a leader is that which makes him a leader. It is the needs of his people.”
―
Frank Herbert
“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
“Color streamed into a toe of darkness testing the sand.”
―
Frank Herbert
“A world is supported by four things….” She held up four big-knuckled fingers. “…the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing….” She closed her fingers into a fist. “…without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!”
―
Frank Herbert
“A stone is heavy and the sand is weighty; but a fool's wrath is heavier than them both.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called "spannungsbogen" -- which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The mind can go either direction under stress—toward positive or toward negative:”
―
Frank Herbert
“Life improves the closed system's capacity to sustain life. Life - all life - is in the service of life. Necessary nutrients are made available to life by life in greater and greater richness as the diversity of life increases. The entire landscape comes alive, filled with relationships and relationships within relationships.”
―
Frank Herbert
“In politics, the tripod is the most unstable of all structures.”
―
Frank Herbert
“If he could smell the pre-spice mass, that meant the gasses deep under the sand were nearing explosive pressure.”
―
Frank Herbert
“I am a leg of the death tripod that will destroy our foes.”
―
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
