Quotes from Frank Herbert

There's no mighty seat of reason which dwells within the brain. Creation is discovery. God discovered us in the Void because we moved against a backgroundwhich He already knew. The wall was blank. Then there was movement.

At root, I am happy with myself. I do not mind being alone.

Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind,'" Paul quoted. "Right out of the Butlerian Jihad and the Orange Catholic Bible," she said. "But what the O.C. Bible should've said is: 'Thou shalt not make a machine to counterfeit a human mind.' Have you studied the Mentat in your service?

What greater gift is there than to demonstrate you need not fear death?

Is your religion real when it costs you nothing and carries no risk? Is your religion real when you fatten upon it? Is your religion real when you commit atrocities in its name? Whence comes your downward degeneration from the original revelation?

You must not look far afield for problems. Such problems may never arrive. Instead, tend to the wolf within your fences. The packs ranging outside might not even exist.

Piter: Ah-ah, Baron! Is it not regrettable you were unable to devise this delicious scheme by yourself? Baron: Someday I will have you strangled, Piter. Piter: Of a certainty, Baron. Enfin! But a kind act is never lost, eh? Baron: Have you been chewing verite or semuta, Piter?

Militant missionary religions can share this illusion of the proud past, ' but few understand the ultimate peril to humankind-that false sense of freedom from responsibility for your own actions.

It became apparent to the Fremen that Kynes was not a madman totally, just mad enough to be holy.

The great mass of humankind possesses an unmistakable unit-identity. It can be one thing. It can act as a single organism.

The music of a civilization has far-reaching consequences on consciousness and, thus, influences the basic nature of a society. Music and its rhythms divert and compel the awareness, describing the limits within which a consciousness, thus fascinated, may operate. Control the music, then, and you own a powerful tool with which to shape the society. ?The Dosadi Analysis, BuSab Documents

To save one from a mistake is a gift of paradise

but the true test of prescience was to see the past in the future.

The most perfect barrier to learning a thing is the belief that is it already known

The Fremen are civil, educated and ignorant," Scytale said. "They're not mad. They're trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.

Let us not bandy philosophical nonsense. Every question can be boiled down to the one: Why is there anything?

This is what it means to be human. Try to hold on to youth and it mocks you while it sprints away.

Governments can be useful to the governed only so long as inherent tendencies toward tyranny are restrained.

Cualquier camino que se sigue con exactitud hasta el fin, conduce con la misma exactitud a ninguna parte. Escalad la montaña solo un poco para comprobar que es una montaña. Desde la cima, no podréis ver la montaña».

My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality.

This Duke was concerned more over the men than he was over the spice. He risked his own life and that of his son to save the men. He passed off the loss of a spice crawler with a gesture. The threat to men's lives had him in a rage. A leader such as that would command fanatic loyalty. He would be difficult to defeat. Against his own will and all previous judgments, Kynes admitted to himself: I like this Duke.

She went through the quick regimen of calmness—the two deep breaths, the ritual thought, then: "When I assign rooms, is there anything special I should reserve for you?" "You must teach me someday how you do that," he said, "the way you thrust your worries aside and turn to practical matters. It must be a Bene Gesserit thing." "It's a female thing," she said.

pale northern complexion that turned to burn at the drop of a sunbeam.

Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, 'I am not the person I want to be.' It must never sink into an assemblage of the self satisfied.