“The knife is more dangerous than the hand and the knife can be in either hand.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Many have marked the speed with which Muad'Dib learned the necessities of Arrakis. The Bene Gesserit, of course, know the basis of this speed. For the others, we can say that Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad'Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Can you remember your first taste of spice?” “It tasted like cinnamon.” “But never twice the same,” he said. “It’s like life—it presents a different face each time you take it. Some hold that the spice produces a learned-flavor reaction. The body, learning a thing is good for it, interprets the flavor as pleasurable—slightly euphoric. And, like life, never to be truly synthesized.”
―
Frank Herbert
“To accept a little death is worse than death itself,”
―
Frank Herbert
“it occurred to Kynes that his father and all the other scientists were wrong, that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error
―
Frank Herbert
“She asked me to tell her what it is to rule,” Paul said. “And I said that one commands. And she said I had some unlearning to do.” She hit a mark there right enough, Hawat thought. He nodded for Paul to continue. “She said a ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel. She said he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men.”
―
Frank Herbert
“How many times must I tell that lad never to settle himself with his back to a door?”
―
Frank Herbert
“they’d chosen always the clear, safe course that leads ever downward into stagnation.”
―
Frank Herbert
“You have a nicety of awareness of the difference between a blade's edge and its tip.”
―
Frank Herbert
“He who controls the spice controls the universe.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Have you heard the latest word from Arrakis?” the Baron asked. “No, Uncle.” Feyd-Rautha forced himself not to look back. He turned down the hall out of the servants’ wing. “They’ve a new prophet or religious leader of some kind among the Fremen,” the Baron said. “They call him Muad’Dib. Very funny, really. It means ‘the Mouse.’ I’ve told Rabban to let them have their religion. It’ll keep them occupied.”
―
Frank Herbert
“When we encounter personal problems, those things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan.”
―
Frank Herbert
“What delicious abandon in the sleep of the child. Where do we lose it?”
―
Frank Herbert
“You never talk of likelihoods on Arrakis. You speak only of possibilities.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Humans live best when each has his own place, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things. Destroy the place and destroy the person.”
―
Frank Herbert
