Quotes from Brian Herbert

It is often easier for us to destroy each other than it is to resolve our differences. Such is the cosmic joke of human nature!

Why look for meaning where there is none? Would you follow a path you know leads nowhere? —Query of the Mentat School

Wherever he went, he left a trail of bodies. The killings brought him little pleasure, though; he would rather have had an answer.

Innovation and daring create heroes. Mindless adherence to outdated rules creates only politicians. —VISCOUNT HUNDRO MORITANI

Now Leto understood why the Old Duke had insisted that his son learn to read his subjects and know the mood of the populace. "At the heart of it all, lad, we rule at their sufferance," Paulus had told him, "though thankfully most of the population doesn't realize it. If you're a good enough ruler, none of your people will think to question it.

In my dreams I hear the long-ago whisper of Caladan seas, like ghostly memories beckoning me back there. Caladan is far, far from the Jihad. —PRIMERO VORIAN ATREIDES, private logs

Each sentient life requires a place of extreme serenity, where the mind may roam afterward in memory and to which the body longs to return.

Leto, I know you're only acting out of love, but sometimes love can guide a person in the wrong direction. Love can blind us to the truth. You're on the wrong path, my Duke, and you know it in your heart." Although he turned away from her, she did not relent. "You must never love the dead more than the living.

It is said that the Fremen has no conscience, having lost it in a burning desire for revenge. This is foolish. Only the rawest primitive and the sociopath have no conscience. The Fremen possesses a highly evolved world-view centered on the welfare of his people. His sense of belonging to the community is almost stronger than his sense of self. It is only to outsiders that these desert dwellers seem brutish Ã¢â'¬Â¦ just as outsiders appear to them. Pardot Kynes, The People of Arrakis

Innovations seem to have a life and a sentience of their own. When conditions are right, a radical new idea—a paradigm shift—may appear simultaneously from many minds at once. Or it may remain secret in the thoughts of one man for years, decades, centuries…until someone else thinks of the same thing.

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. —PAUL ATREIDES, Memories of Muad'Dib

I have run tests on the handsome young man— he is fine breeding stock. After your pregnancy is finished, would you like to mate with him?" Serena took an agitated breath, fixing her mind on memories of Xavier. "Mate? Regardless of how much you study us, there are many things your machine brain will never understand about human nature." "We shall see about that," he said, calmly.

Imperial man," said Turok, stepping forward from the shade, "what is it you see when you stare out onto the desert like that?" Kynes answered without looking at him. "I see limitless possibilities.

Melange is the financial crux of CHOAM activities. Without this spice, Bene Gesserit Reverend Mothers could not perform feats of observation and human control, Guild Navigators could not see safe pathways across space, and billions of Imperial citizens would die of addictive withdrawal. Any simpleton knows that such dependence upon a single commodity leads to abuse. We are all at risk.

Night is a hole in yesterday, and a tunnel into tomorrow. —Zensunni fire poetry

Resistance to change is a survival characteristic. But in its extreme form, it is poisonous—and suicidal. —Zensunni stricture

For forty years, this desert world had been the quasi-fief of House Harkonnen, a political appointment granted by the Emperor, with the blessing of the commercial powerhouse CHOAM—the Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles. Though grim and unpleasant, Arrakis was one of the most important jewels in the Imperial crown because of the precious substance it provided.

The narrow mind erects stubborn barriers," her mother had once told her. "But against those barriers, words are formidable weapons.

Those who are half alive demand what is missing in them, but deny it when it is presented to them, and they fear the proof of their own insufficiency.

The Spacing Guild has worked for centuries to surround our elite Navigators with mystique. They are revered, from the lowest Pilot to the most talented Steersman. They live in tanks of spice gas, see all paths through space and time, guide ships to the far reaches of the Imperium. But no one knows the human cost of becoming a Navigator. We must keep this a secret, for if they really knew the truth, they would pity us.

In the contemplative garden, the troubled robot sat in the ruddy sunlight and felt warmth on his metal skin. This was another thing that humans seemed to enjoy, but he did not understand why. Even with his sensory enhancement module, it just seemed like heat.

Assumptions are a transparent grid through which we view the universe, sometimes deluding ourselves that the grid is that universe. —COGITOR EKLO OF EARTH

When receiving an unexpected gift, a wise man does not ask too many questions. Only the foolish person assumes that a gift is simply a gift, and that there are no implied obligations. —DIRECTEUR JOSEF VENPORT, Venport Holdings consolidation memo

The symbolism of a belief can survive far longer than the belief itself.