Quotes from Frank Herbert

Schools were started to train human talents... The Guild... emphasizes almost pure mathematics. Bene Gesserit performs... politics. The original Bene Gesserit school was directed by those who saw the need of a thread of continuity in human affairs. They saw there count be no such continuity without separating human stock from animal stock - for breeding purposes.

The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him.

One of the most dangerous things in the universe is an ignorant people with real grievances. That is nowhere near as dangerous, however, as an informed and intelligent society with grievances.

People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.

It's a beautiful morning, Sire, the guard said Yes, it is. The Duke nodded, thinking: Perhaps this planet could grow on one. Perhaps it could ba a good home for my son. Then he saw the human figures moving into the flower fields, sweeping with them strange scythe-like devices--dew gatherers. Water so precious here that even the dew must be collected. And it could be a hideous place, the Duke thought.

You can say things which cannot be done. This is elementary. The trick is to keep attention focused on what is said and not on what can be done.

There is the difference between us," he said. "You are God embodied. You walk around within the greatest miracle of this universe, yet you refuse to touch or see or feel or believe in it.

This is the fallacy of power: ultimately, it is effective only in an absolute, a limited universe. But the basic lesson of our relativistic universe is that things change. Any power must always meet a greater power.

It was a BuSab axiom that all power blocs tended toward aristocratic forms, that the descendants of decision makers dominated the power niches.

A good bureaucracy is the best tool of oppression ever invented.

Leaders made mistakes. And those mistakes, amplified by the numbers who followed without questioning, moved inevitably toward great disasters.

Police always observe that criminals prosper. It takes a pretty dull policeman to miss the fact that the position of authority is the most prosperous criminal position available.