Quotes from Frank Herbert

Better a dry morsel and quietness therewith than a house full of sacrifice and strife.

Life improves the closed system's capacity to sustain life. Life - all life - is in the service of life. Necessary nutrients are made available to life by life in greater and greater richness as the diversity of life increases. The entire landscape comes alive, filled with relationships and relationships within relationships.

Jessica, hearing the voices, felt the depth of the experience, realized what terrible inhibitions there must be against shedding tears. She focused on the words: "He gives moisture to the dead." It was a gift to the shadow world—tears. They would be sacred beyond a doubt.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

You cannot fix your gaze upon it! Senses cannot record it. No words describe it. -Alia

Once more the drama begins.' — The Emperor Paul Muad'dib on his ascension to the Lion Throne.

This moment here is the only observable time and place for us in our universe.

To the east, the night grew a faggot of luminous grey, then seashell opalescence that dimmed the stars. There came the long, bell-tolling movement of dawn striking across a broken horizon.

It is said in the desert that possession of water in great amount can inflict a man with fatal carelessness.

A good ruler has to learn his world's language, and that's different for every world, the language you don't hear just with your ears.

the drowning man who climbs on your shoulders to save himself is understandable—except when you see it happen in the drawing room.

Power bases are very dangerous because they attract people who are truly insane, people who seek power only for the sake of power.

You don't see much of any path unless you are Janus, looking simultaneously backward and forward.

Power and fear, he said. The tools of statecraft.

Do not be trapped by the need to achieve anything. This way, you achieve everything.

One moment of incompetence can be fatal.

I know a profound pattern humans deny with words even while their actions affirm it. They say they seek security and quiet, conditions they call peace. Even as they speak, they create seeds of turmoil and violence.

We are plagued by a corrupt polity which promotes unlawful and/or immoral behaviour. Public interest has no practical significance in everyday behaviour among the ruling factions. The real problems of our world are not being confronted by those in power. In the guise of public service, they use whatever comes to hand for personal gain. They are insane with and for power.

Fragmentation is the natural destiny of all power.

Radicals are only to be feared when you try to suppress them. You must demonstrate that you will use the best of what they offer.

Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know.

Every religious, business and governmental question has the single derivative: 'Who will exercise the power?' Alliances, combines, complexes, they all chase mirages unless they go for the power. All else is nonsense, as most thinking beings come to realize.

The highest function of ecology is understanding consequences.

Government and religion united, and breaking a law became sin. A smell of blasphemy arose like smoke around any questioning of governmental edicts.