Quotes from Frank Herbert

Ah, Hah! But you see, Baron, I know as a Mentat when you will send the executioner. You will hold back just so long as I am useful. To move sooner would be wasteful and I'm yet of much use. I know what it is you learned from that lovely Dune planet - waste not? True, Baron? -Piter De Vries

Ah! Indeed but! But he consumes too much spice, eats it like candy. Look at his eyes! He might have come directly from the Arrakeen labor pool. Efficient, Piter, but he's still emotional and prone to passionate outbursts. Efficient, Piter, but he still can err. -Baron Vladimir

Inflection is the adjective of language. It carries the subtleties of delight and horror, the essence of culture and social process.

The body, learning a thing is good for it, interprets the flavor as pleasurable—slightly euphoric. And, like life, never to be truly synthesized.

Piter spoke to Jessica. I'd thought of binding you by a threat held over your son, but I begin to see that would not have worked. I let emotion cloud reason. Bad policy for a Mentat.

No matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no matter the developments of life and society nor the complexity of the machine/human interface, there always come interludes of lonely power when the course of humankind, the very future of humankind, depends upon the relatively simple actions of single individuals.

if I'd been born in my grandfather's time, I'd have made my grandfather's mistakes. There's no doubt of it. I just don't want to make my grandfather's mistakes today.

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

it's a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, those things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. We tend to flounder around, blaming everything but the actual, deep-seated thing that's really chewing on us.

If you focus your awareness only upon your own rightness, then you invite the forces of opposition to overwhelm you. This is a common error. Even I, your teacher, have made it.

Are you a believer or just playing safe?

But attack can take strange forms. And you will remember the tooth. The tooth. Duke Leto Atreides. You will remember the tooth. -Dr.Yueh

People, not commercial organizations or chains of command, are what make great civilizations work. Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness—they cannot work and their civilization collapses.

Every question, every problem doesn't have a single correct answer. One must permit diversity. A monolith is unstable.

Radicals always see matters in terms which are too simple—black and white, good and evil, them and us. By addressing complex matters in that way, they rip open a passage for chaos. The art of government as you call it, is the mastery of chaos.

When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.

Religion suppresses curiosity.

I guess I'm not in the mood for it today," Paul said. "Mood?" Halleck's voice betrayed his outrage even through the shield's filtering. "What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises—no matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It's not for fighting.

Remember your philosopher's doubts, Miles. Beware! The mind of the believer stagnates. It fails to grow outward into an unlimited, infinite universe.

Duncan spoke quietly: 'Lucilla, if you touch me again without my permission, I will try to kill you. I will try so hard that you very likely will have to kill me.

Questions are my enemies. For my questions explode!

Men and their works have been a disease on the surface of their planets [...] Nature tends to compensate for diseases, to remove or encapsulate them, to incorporate them into the system in her own way.

But the test of a man isn't what you think he'll do. It's what he actually does.

They who learn the lesson of self-deception too well shall perish by that deception.