Frank Herbert

“Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place.”

“motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches.”

“But let us not rail about justice as long as we have arms and the freedom to use them.”

“And those who pray for dew on the deserts edge; shall bring forth the deluge.”

“I never thought it would be easy to serve God," she said. "I just didn't think it would be this hard.”

“Whether a thought is spoken or not it is a real thing and it has power," Tuek said. "You might find the line between life and death among the Fremen to be too sharp and quick.”

“How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him.”

“A man's flesh is his own; the water belongs to the tribe.”

“People don't vote. Instinct tells them it's useless.”

“If all those around you believe some particular thing, you will soon be tempted to share in that belief.”

“The abyss remains. It is pregnant with all the things yet to be. Ah, what gentle violence!”

“I live in an apocalyptic dream. My steps fit into it so precisely that I fear most of all I will grow bored reliving the thing so exactly.”

“Think on it, Chani: the princess will have the name, yet she'll live as less than a concubine - never to know a moment of tenderness from the man to whom she's bound. While we, Chani, we who carry the name of concubine - history will call us wives.”

“The waters which we spread upon the desert have become blood. Blood upon our land! Behold our desert which could rejoice and blossom; it has lured the stranger and seduced him in our midst. They come for violence! Their faces are closed up as for the last wind of Kralizec! They gather the captivity of the sand. They suck up the abundance of the sand, the treasure hidden in the depths. Behold them as they go forth to their evil work. It is written: 'And I stood upon the sand, and I saw a beast rise up out of that sand, and upon the head of that beast was the name of God!”

“Some say," Scytale said, "that people cling to Imperial leadership because space is infinite. They feel lonely without a unifying symbol. For a lonely people, the Emperor is a definite place. They can turn toward him and say: 'See, there He is. He makes us one.' Perhaps religion serves the same purpose, m'Lord.”

“Earth? Golden Age?" Stilgar was irritated and puzzled. Why would Paul wish to discuss myths from the dawn of time?”

“We say, "Well, the only answer is...." or, "If you would just. . . ." Whatever follows these two statements narrows the choices right there. It gets the vision right down close to the ground so that you don't see anything happening outside. Humans tend not to see over a long range. Now we are required, in these generations, to have a longer range view of what we inflict on the world around us. This is where, I think, science fiction is helping. I don't think that the mere writing of such a book as Brave New World or 1984 prevents those things which are portrayed in those books from happening. But I do think they alert us to that possibility and make that possibility less likely. They make us aware that we may be going in that direction.”

“There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man - with human flesh.”

“We faced it and did not resist. The storm passed through us and around us. It's gone, but we remain.”

“Irreverence is a most necessary ingredient of religion. Not to speak of its importance in philosophy. Irreverence is the only way left to us for testing our universe.”

“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.”

“A sophisticated human can become primitive. What this really means is that the human's way of life changes. Old values change, become linked to the landscape with it's plants and animals. This new existence requires a working knowledge of those multiplex and cross-linked events usually referred to as Nature. It requires a measure of respect for the inertial power within such natural systems. When a human gains this knowledge and respect, that is called "being primitive". The converse, of course, is equally true: the primitive human can become sophisticated, but not without incurring dreadful psychological damage.”

“The assumption that a whole system can be made to work better through an assault on its conscious elements betrays a dangerous ignorance. This has often been the approach of those who call themselves scientists and technologists.”

“To know a thing well, know its limits; Only when pushed beyond its tolerance will its true nature be seen.-The Amtal Rule”

“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.”

“But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, "Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write.”

“There was a man so wise,He jumped intoA sandy placeAnd burnt out both his eyes!And when he knew his eyes were gone,He offered no complaint.He summoned up a visionAnd made himself a saint. -Children's Verse from History of Muad'dib”

“the sleeper must awaken”

“Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon 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. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.”

“His voice was low, charged with unspeakable adjectives.”

“I am not the river I am the net.”

“The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”

“Atrocity is recognized as such by victim and perpetrator alike, by all who learn about it at whatever remove. Atrocity has no excuses, no mitigating argument. Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. It is self-perpetuating upon itself — a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred.”

“If wishes were fishes, we'd all cast nets.”

“To be a god can ultimately become boring and degrading. There'd be reason enough for the invention of free will! A god might wish to escape into sleep and be alive only in the unconscious projections of his dream-creatures.”

“Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class - whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.- Politics as Repeat Phenomenon: Bene Gesserit Training Manual”

“The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy.”

“Behold, as a wild ass in the desert, go I forth to my work.”

“She looked at patches of blackness. Black is a blind remembering, she thought.”

“He who controls the spice controls the universe.”

“The flesh surrenders itself. Eternity takes back its own. Our bodies stirred these waters briefly, danced with a certain intoxication before the love of life and self, dealt with a few strange ideas, then submitted to the instruments of Time. What can we say of this? I occurred. I am not...yet, I occurred.”

“The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.”

“The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.”

“Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?”

“What do you despise? By this are you truly known.”

“If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.”

“Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans 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 so survive.”

“The singular multiplicity of this universe draws my deepest attention. It is a thing of ultimate beauty. Leto II”

“Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.”

“Here lies a toppled god.His fall was not a small one.We did but build his pedestal,A narrow and a tall one.”