Quotes from Frank Herbert

And the question of Wester religion," Flattery said, "is: What lies beyond death? But the question of the Zen master is: What lies beyond waking?

A single obscure decision of prophecy, perhaps the choice of one word over another, could change the entire aspect of the future. He tells us The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door.

One doesn't need telepathy to read your intentions.

Humans live best when each has his place to stand, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things and what he may achieve. Destroy the place and you destroy the person.

Myths are not fiction, but history seen with a poet's eyes and recounted in a poet's terms.

Ve?ina ljudi nije dovoljno jaka za pronalaženje slobode u sebi.

I'll never be a Mentat," he said. "I'm something else…a freak.

Anything and anyone can fail, he said, but brave good friends help.

The people who demand that the oracle predict for them really want to know next year's price on whalefur or something equally mundane. None of them wants an instant-by-instant prediction of his personal life.

There exists no separation between gods and men; one blends softly casual into the other. —Proverbs of Muad'Dib

When religion and politics ride the same cart, when that cart is driven by a living holy man (baraka), nothing can stand in their path.

Laws tend to be temporary over the long haul, Moneo. There is no such thing as rule-governed creativity.

Men, finding no answers to the sunnan [ten thousand religious questions from the Shari-ah] now apply their own reasoning. All men seek to be enlightened. Religion is but the most ancient and honorable way in which men have striven to make sense out of God's universe. Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is the task of Religion to fit man into this lawfulness.

The pitfall of Bene Gesserit training, she reminded herself, lay in the powers granted: such powers predisposed one to vanity and pride. But power deluded those who used it. One tended to believe power could overcome any barrier … including one's own ignorance.

I see the day coming when ceremony must take the place of faith and symbolism replaces morality.

I think what a joy it is to be alive, and I wonder if I'll ever leap inward to the root of this flesh and know myself as once I was. The root is there. Whether any act of mine can find it, that remains tangled in the future. But all things a man can do are mine. Any act of mine may do it. —THE GHOLA SPEAKS ALIA'S COMMENTARY

Paul confronted his son then, aiming the eyeless sockets at Leto. "Do you really know the universe you have created here?

my deal's the only one in town

What we should have done was test the gift first. We should have probed for dangers. We were too bedazzled by it, though.

To die before coming to the end of willpower, was that not an aristocrat's choice? He

Communal/managed economics have always been more destructive of their societies than those driven by greed

What religion and self-interest cannot hide, governments can, Edric said.

When the populace recognizes its chains. Keep the populace blind and unquestioning.

Then are there no rules at all, Lord?" Moneo's voice conveyed a faint hint of hysteria. Leto smiled to ease the man's tensions. "Perhaps one. Short–term decisions tend to fail in the long–term.