Quotes from Frank Herbert

You think that in a world without birds, men would not invent aircraft! What a fool you are! Men can invent anything!

Mohiam had been fond of explaining this particular error to her student, Jessica. "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." "And even I, your student, have made it," Jessica whispered to herself.

A razão é a primeira vítima das emoções fortes.

Like as not I have seen them," he said.

These are illusions of popular history which a successful religion must promote: Evil men never prosper; only the brave deserve the fair; honesty is the best policy; actions speak louder than words; virtue always triumphs; a good deed is its own reward; any bad human can be reformed; religious talismans protect one from demon possession; only females understand the ancient mysteries; the rich are doomed to unhappiness . . . —FROM THE INSTRUCTION MANUAL:

There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.

History is a constant race between invention and catastrophe. Education helps but it's never enough. You also must run.

Quem governa assume uma responsabilidade irrevogável pelos governados. Você é um fazendeiro. Isso exige, em certo momentos, um ato de amor altruísta que talvez pareça apenas divertido para aqueles a quem você governa.

But the pain—" he said. "Pain," she sniffed. "A human can override any nerve in the body.

Because I know this planet. You don't understand? Think how it is. Beneath the surface there are rocks, dirt, sediment, sand. That's the planet's memory, the picture of its history. It's the same with humans. The dog remembers the wolf. Each universe revolves around a core of being, and outward from that core go all of the memories, right out to the surface.

You can't stop a mental epidemic.

Big breasts in a woman and hard loins in a man (that tightly muscular look to the buttocks)—these were naturally important in sexual matchings. But without the eyes, the rest of it could go for nothing. Eyes were essential. You could drown in the right kind of eyes, he had learned, sink right into them and be unaware of what was being done to you until penis was firmly clasped in vagina. He

Când crezi în anumite cuvinte, crezi în argumentele lor ascunse. Când crezi c? un lucru este corect sau greÈ™it, adev?rat sau fals, crezi în ipotezele conÈ›inute în cuvintele care exprim? argumentele. Asemenea ipoteze sunt deseori pline de lacune, îns? ele au preÈ›ioasa calitate de a fi conving?toare.

We've a three-point civilization: the Imperial Household balanced against the Federated Great Houses of the Landsraad, and between them, the Guild with its damnable monopoly on interstellar transport. In politics, the tripod is the most unstable of all structures. It'd be bad enough without the complication of a feudal trade culture which turns its back on most science.

I know the trap of prescience. My father's life tells me what I need to know about it. No, grandmother: to know the future absolutely is to be trapped into that future absolutely. It collapses time. Present becomes future. I require more freedom than that.

plan depends as much upon execution as it does upon concept.

A seed blown on the wind could be tomorrow's willow tree.

The pattern is inexorable in its degenerative failures. You see it repeated in the systems of slavery, of welfare states, of caste-ridden religions, of socializing bureaucracies--in any system which creates and maintains dependencies. Too long a parasite and you cannot exist without a host.

The child who refuses to travel in the father's harness, this is the symbol of man's most unique capability. "I do not have to be what my father was. I do not have to obey my father's rules or even believe everything he believed. It is my strength as a human that I can make my own choices of what to believe and what not to believe, of what to be and what not to be." —Leto Atreides II The Harq al-Ada Biography

When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong—faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late.

What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do without thinking. Things we do without thinking—there's the real danger. Look at how long you walked across this desert without thinking about your face mask.

All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you've always known.

Gördükleri kar??s?nda donup kalmak, hiç k?m?ldamamak isterdi; ama bu da birtak?m sonuçlar doÄŸuracak bir eylemdi.

White for poison, black for purity," the Lady Fenring said. "A curious custom, isn't it, my love?