Quotes from Frank Herbert

My son displays a general garment and you claim it's cut to your fit?" Jessica asked. "What a fascinating revelation.

Wild Fremen said it well: Four things cannot be hidden -- love, smoke, a pillar of fire and a man striding across the open bled.

I point out to you, Marcus Claire Luyseyal, a lesson from past over-machined societies which you appear not to have learned. The devices themselves condition the users to employ each other the way they employ machines.

There are many degrees of sight and many degrees of blindness. What senses do we lack that we cannot see another world all around us?

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.

This is the age of the shrug. He knows I've heard all of the stories about him and he doesn't care. Our civilization could well die of indifference within it before succumbing to external attack.

What you of the CHOAM directorate seem unable to understand is that you seldom find real loyalties in commerce ... Men must want to do things of their own innermost drives. People, not commercial organisations or chains of command, are what make great civilizations work, every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces. If you overorganize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness — they cannot work and their civilization collapses.

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

She thought of the boy's features as an exquisite distillation out of random patterns-endless queues of happenstance meeting at this nexus.

The more I find out, the more I realize that I don't know what's going on. How fortunate that you have discovered the way of wisdom, Leto said.

Sad? Nonsense! Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place.

There's no mystery about a human life. It's not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

El misterio de la vida no es problema que hay que resolver, sino una realidad que hay que experimentar.

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

When we try to conceal our innermost drives, the entire being screams betrayal.

The universe is full of doors.

In the view of infinity, any defined long-term is short-term.

I observed you in pain, lad. Pain's merely the axis of the test. Your mother's told you about our ways of observing. I see the signs of her teaching in you. Our test is crisis and observation.

the sleeper must awaken

Too Much Knowledge never makes for Simple Decisions.

If I always behave with propriety, no matter what it costs me to suppress my own desires, then that is the measure of me. Such is the essence of self-control.

Growth is limited by that necessity which is present in the least amount.

To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.

Are you already training my replacement? Piter demanded. Replace you? Why, Piter, where could I find another Mentat with your cunning and venom? The same place you found me, Baron. Perhaps I should at that, the Baron mused. You do seem a bit unstable lately. And the spice you eat! Are my pleasures too expensive, Baron? Do you object to them? My dear Piter, your pleasures are what tie you to me. How could I object to that?