Quotes from Frank Herbert

Hittite law emphasized restitution rather than revenge. Humankind lost a certain useful practicality when it chose the other Semitic response—never to forgive and never to forget.

But, putting on a stillsuit, he put on the desert.

You must teach me the way you thrust your worries aside and turn to practical matters.

Democracy is susceptible to being led astray by having scapegoats paraded in front of the electorate. Get the rich, the greedy, the criminals, the stupid leader and so on ad nauseam.

Religion began as a female monopoly, wrested from them only after its social power became too dominant. Women were the first medical researchers and practitioners. There has never been any clear balance between the sexes because power goes with certain roles as it certainly goes with knowledge.

Concealed behind strong barriers the heart becomes ice.

My father rules an entire planet. He's losing it.

Do you want me to say that men create gods to enforce their definitions of good and evil?

Historians exercise great power and some of them know it. They re-create the past, changing it to fit their own interpretations. Thus, they change the future as well.

You never talk of likelihoods on Arrakis. You speak only of possibilities.

In their passion for sameness, the tyrants made themselves more and more powerful. All others grew correspondingly weaker and weaker. New bureaus and directorates, odd ministries, leaped into existence for the most improbable purposes. These became the citadels of a new aristocracy, rulers who kept the giant wheel of government careening along, spreading destruction, violence, and chaos wherever they touched.

they'd chosen always the clear, safe course that leads ever downward into stagnation.

Any religion circles like a planet around a sun which it must use for its energy, upon which it depends for its very existence. Her voice came barely above a whisper: What do you see in your sun, Lord? A universe of many windows through which I may peer. Whatever the window frames, that is what I see. The future? The universe is timeless at its roots and contains therefore all times and all futures.

Have you noticed, Stil, how beautiful the young women are this year?

It was another of the essential ingredients that she felt her son needed: people with a goal. Such people would be easy to imbue with fervor and fanaticism. They could be wielded like a sword to win back Paul's place for him.

We are the people of Misr," the old woman rasped. "Since our Sunni ancestors fled from Nilotic al-Ourouba, we have known flight and death. The young go on that our people shall not die.

Divide and rule, subdivide and rule even more powerfully, fragment and rule absolutely." "That's

He mastered the inner world while holding the outer in contempt, and this led to catastrophe.

You always know the creative because it is revealed openly. Concealment betrays the existence of another force entirely.

I succumbed to the lure of the oracle , he thought. And he sensed that succumbing to this lure might be to fix himself upon a single-track life. Could it be, he wondered, that the oracle didn't tell the future? Could it be that the oracle made the future?

It'd be bad enough without the complication of a feudal trade culture which turns its back on most science.

But the tripod upon which Eternity swings is composed of flesh and thought and emotion.

I see the signs!" Jessica snapped. "My question was meant to remind you that you should not try to teach me those matters in which I instructed you." Paul

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.