“How strange that so few people ever looked up from the spice long enough to wonder at the near-ideal nitrogen-oxygen-CO2 balance being maintained here in the absence of large areas of plant cover.”
―
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
“They displayed a sophistication in warfare as good as anything he had ever encountered, and he had been trained by the best fighters in the universe then seasoned in battles where only the superior few survived.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The real universe is always one step behind logic.”
―
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
“It was another of the essential ingredients that she felt her son needed: people with a goal. Such people would be easy to imbue with fervor and fanaticism. They could be wielded like a sword to win back Paul’s place for him.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part on the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him.”
―
Frank Herbert
“You must learn to rule. It's something none of your ancestors learned.”
―
Frank Herbert
“It was a scene of such beauty it caught all his attention. Some things beggar likeness, he thought.
―
Frank Herbert
“You see, gentlemen, they have something to die for. They've discovered they're a people. They're awakening.”
―
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
“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
“Prophecy and prescience—How can they be put to the test in the face of the unanswered question? Consider: How much is actual prediction of the “wave form” (as Muad’Dib referred to his vision-image) and how much is the prophet shaping the future to fit the prophecy? What of the harmonics inherent in the act of prophecy? Does the prophet see the future or does he see a line of weakness, a fault or cleavage that he may shatter with words or decisions as a diamond-cutter shatters his gem with a blow of a knife?”
―
Frank Herbert
“Mood’s a thing for cattle or for making love. You fight when the necessity arises, no matter your mood.”
―
Frank Herbert
“This world has emptied me of all but the oldest purpose: tomorrow’s life. I live now for my young Duke and the daughter yet to be.
―
Frank Herbert
