Quotes from Frank Herbert

Technology, in common with many other activities, tends toward avoidance of risks by investors. Uncertainty is ruled out if possible. Capital investment follows this rule, since people generally prefer the predictable. Few recognize how destructive this can be, how it imposes severe limits on variability and thus makes whole populations fatally vulnerable to the shocking ways our universe can throw the dice. —ASSESSMENT OF IX, BENE GESSERIT ARCHIVES

Leto stood in the foyer of his house, studying a note by the light of a single suspensor lamp. Dawn was yet a few hours away, and he felt his tiredness. A Fremen messenger had brought the note to the outer guard just now as the Duke arrived from his command post

Could you be anything but bluntly honest with a wide-awake human being?

Be deaf! You do not need to hear or, hearing, you do not need to remember. How soothing it is to forget. And how dangerous

Constitutions become the ultimate tyranny," Paul said. "They're organized power on such a scale as to be overwhelming. The constitution is social power mobilized and it has no conscience. It can crush the highest and the lowest, removing all dignity and individuality. It has an unstable balance point and no limitations. I, however, have limitations. In my desire to provide an ultimate protection for my people, I forbid a constitution.

There had been so many things to learn. Arrakis would be a place so different from Caladan that Paul's mind whirled with the new knowledge. Arrakis—Dune—Desert Planet.

I have little to do with how you'll meet tomorrow, Gurney Halleck. I can only help you meet today.

A time to keep and a time to cast away; a time for love and a time to hate; a time of war and a time of peace.

The realization that all religions had at least one common commandment: "Thou shalt not disfigure the soul.

House Corrino would not risk such a holocaust. They were undoubtedly sincere in subscribing to the argument that nuclear weapons were a reserve held for one purpose: defense of humankind should a threatening "other intelligence" ever be encountered.

Grave this on your memory, lad: A world is supported by four things... She held up four big-knuckled fingers. .. the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing... She closed her fingers into a fist. .. without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!

A certain amount of killing has always been an arm of business