Quotes from Frank Herbert

Whether a thought is spoken or not it is a real thing and has powers of reality.

Many things we do naturally become difficult only when we try to make them intellectual subjects. It is possible to know so much about a subject that you become totally ignorant.

Membership in a conspiracy, as in an army, frees people from the sense of personal responsibility.

I warn you that ignorance thrives on hysteria.

I remember friends from wars all but we forgot. All of them distilled into each wound we caught. Those wounds are all painful places where we fought. Battles never left behind, ones we never sought. What is it that we spent and what was it we bought?

I began with love and prayer," Moneo said. "I changed to anger and rebellion. I was transformed into what you see before you. I recognize my duty and I do it.

This world has emptied me of all but the oldest purpose: tomorrow's life. I live now for my young Duke and the daughter yet to be. She

She's the One all right," she muttered. "Poor thing.

Pride overcame Paul's fear. You dare suggest a duke's son is an animal? he demanded. Let us say I suggest you may be human, she said. Steady! I warn you not to try jerking away. I am old, but my hand can drive this needle into your neck before you escape me.

She felt that her body had walked into this place with her soul creeping behind.

It was a scene of such beauty it caught all his attention. Some things beggar likeness, he thought. He

Gurney says there's no artistry in killing with the tip, that it should be done with the edge.

Every civilization must contend with an unconscious force which can block, betray or countermand almost any conscious intention of the collectivity.   —

How would you like to live billions upon billions of lives?" Paul asked. "There's a fabric of legends for you! Think of all those experiences, the wisdom they'd bring. But wisdom tempers love, doesn't it? And it puts a new shape on hate. How

Then came the Butlerian Jihad—two generations of chaos. The god of machine-logic was overthrown among the masses and a new concept was raised: "Man may not be replaced." Those

Não terei medo. O medo mata a mente. O medo é a pequena morte que leva à aniquilação total. Enfrentarei meu medo. Permitirei que passe por cima e através de mim. E, quando tiver passado, voltarei o olho interior para ver seu rastro. Onde o medo não estiver mais, nada haverá. Somente eu restarei.

You talk of prisons and police and legalities, the perfect illusions behind which a prosperous power structure can operate while observing, quite accurately, that it is above its own laws.

Can you remember your first taste of spice?" "It tasted like cinnamon.

it occurred to Kynes that his father and all the other scientists were wrong, that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error. Even

And he realized with an abrupt sense shock that he had been giving more and more reliance to prescient memory and it had weakened him for this particular emergency.

So I quoted the First Law of Mentat at her: 'A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.

They were undoubtedbly sincere in subscribing to the argument that nuclear weapons were a reserve held for one purpose: defense of humankind should a threatening 'other intelligence' ever be encountered.

You cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion. This power struggle permeates the training, educating and disciplining of the orthodox community. Because of this pressure, the leaders of such a community inevitably must face that ultimate internal question: to succumb to complete opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing themselves for the sake of the orthodox ethic.

Humans have a tendency to complain whenever the old must give way to the new. But change is the natural way of the universe, and we must learn to embrace it rather than fear it. The very process of transformation and adaptation strengthens the species.