Quotes from Frank Herbert

Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred.

Life improves the capacity to sustain life [...] Life makes needed nutrients more readily available. It binds more energy into the system through the tremendous chemical interplay from organism to organism.

For what would you use such a place, Paul Atreides?" "To make this planet a fit place for humans," Paul said. Perhaps that's why I help them, Kynes thought.

Religion and law among our masses must be one and the same," his father said. "An act of disobedience must be a sin and require religious penalties. This will have the dual benefit of bringing both greater obedience and greater bravery.

life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.

Humans had set those machines to usurp our sense of beauty, our necessary selfdom out of which we make living judgments.

The trouble with some kinds of warfare (and be certain the Tyrant knew this, because it is implicit in his lesson) is that they destroy all moral decency in susceptible types. Warfare of these kinds will dump the destroyed survivors back into an innocent population that is incapable of even imagining what such returned soldiers might do. -Teachings of the Golden Path, Bene Gesserit Archives

Love, that is what you understand, she said. Love. And that is all of it. [...] You have faith in life, Hwi said. I know that the courage of love can reside only in this faith.

If you think you own something, that's like walking on quicksand.

Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your own life. The object can be started this way: Live the best life you can. Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck.

Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.

And what have they created?" Taraza asked. "Only the image of evil stupidity?" "Act stupid long enough and you become stupid