“He maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals, and a people reverts to a mob.”
―
Frank Herbert
“All around the Lady Jessica—piled in corners of the Arrakeen great hall, mounded in the open spaces—stood the packaged freight of their lives: boxes, trunks, cartons, cases—some partly unpacked.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Axiom: the best place to conserve your water is in your body. It keeps your energy up. You’re stronger. Trust your stillsuit.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Jessica stopped beside him: ‘What delicious abandon in the sleep of a child.’
He spoke mechanically: ‘If only adults could relax like that.’
‘Yes.’
‘When do we lose it?’ He murmured…
‘We do indeed lose something,’ she said.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Nothing wins more loyalty for a leader than an air of bravura," the Duke said. "I, therefore, cultivate an air of bravura.”
―
Frank Herbert
“A ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel.”
―
Frank Herbert
“She looked at patches of blackness. Black is a blind remembering, she thought.”
―
Frank Herbert
“I see us giving love to each other in a time of quiet between storms. It's what we were meant to do.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Piter spoke to Jessica. "I'd thought of binding you by a threat held over your son, but I begin to see that would not have worked. I let emotion cloud reason. Bad policy for a Mentat.”
―
Frank Herbert
“There is no measuring Muad'Dib's motives by ordinary standards. In the moment of his triumph, he saw the death prepared for him, yet he accepted the treachery. Can you say he did this out of a sense of justice? Whose justice, then? Remember, we speak now of the Muad'Dib who ordered battle drums made from his enemies' skins, the Muad'Dib who denied the conventions of his ducal past with a wave of the hand, saying merely: 'I am the Kwisatz Haderach. That is reason enough.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.”
―
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
“The mind can go either direction under stress—toward positive or toward negative:”
―
Frank Herbert
“My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality.”
―
Frank Herbert
“One must always keep the tools of statecraft sharp and ready. Power and fear – sharp and ready.”
―
Frank Herbert
