Quotes from Frank Herbert

A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people. He maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals, and a people revert to a mob.

Starlight displaced just enough of the night to charge each shadow with menace.

They were permitted their illusions. What a comfort. You could pretend your life was forever, that tomorrow would be better, that the gods in their heavens watched you with care.

Cât de tentant este s? ridic?m ziduri înalte È™i s? împiedic?m p?trunderea oric?rei schimb?ri. S? putrezim aici, în confortul mulÈ›umirii de sine.

Whether a thought is spoken or not it is a real thing and it has power.

All around the dome lay hills mangy with melting snow which reflected mottled wet blueness from the small blue-white sun hanging at the meridian.

Îngr?dirile de orice fel sunt cel mai fertil teren pentru cultivarea urii fa?? de tot ce vine din exterior (...). Numai c? recolta este întotdeauna amar?.

world being the sum of many things—the people, the dirt, the growing things, the moons, the tides, the suns—the unknown sum called nature, a vague summation without any sense of the now. And he wondered: What is the now?

There are problems in this universe for which there are no answers," Paul said. "Nothing. Nothing can be done.

La prudenza è la via della mediocrità. La mediocrità priva di passioni è tutto ciò che tanta gente crede di poter raggiungere.

L'ironia spesso nasconde l'incapacità di andare oltre le proprie convinzioni.

A top-heavy bureaucracy the electorate cannot touch always expands to the system's limits of energy. Steal it from the aged, from the retired, from anyone. Especially from those we once called middle class because that's where most of the energy originates.

The young generally are incapable of making hard decisions unless those decisions are associated with immediate violence and the consequent sharp flow of adrenalin

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.

Pain is a function of nerves, Idaho reminded himself. Pain comes as light comes to the eyes. Effort comes from the muscles, not from nerves. It was an old mentat drill and he completed it in the space of one breath

Regulile stricte înal?? fortificaÈ›ii la ad?postul c?rora minÈ›ile înguste îi creeaz? pe satrapi. Stare de lucruri periculoas? când totul merge bine, dezastruoas? în momente de criz?.

Let us not bandy philosophical nonsense. Every question can be boiled down to the one: 'Why is there anything?' Every religious, business and governmental question has the single derivative: 'Who will exercise the power?

A predawn hush had come over the desert basin. He looked up. Straight overhead, the stars were a sequin shawl flung over blue-black. Low on the southern horizon, the night's second moon peered through a thin dust haze--an unbelieving moon that looked at him with a cynical light.

There is in each of us an ancient force that takes and an ancient force that gives. A man finds little difficulty facing that place within himself where the taking force dwells, but it's almost impossible for him to see into the giving force without changing into something other than man. For a woman, the situation is reversed.

If you need something to worship, then worship life—all life, every last crawling bit of it! We're all in this beauty together!

There was pain in him—like a blister, all that was left of some lost yesterday that Time had pruned off him.

Thufir, old friend," Paul said, "as you can see, my back is toward no door." "The universe is full of doors," Hawat said.

All governments need to remain under suspicion in their time of power.

A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.' That seemed to satisfy her.