Quotes from Frank Herbert

Shield your son too much, Jessica, and he'll not grow strong enough to fulfill any destiny.

Dependency infrastructure is a term that includes all things necessary for a human population to survive at existing or increased numbers

You cannot go on forever stealing what you need without regard to those who come after. The physical qualities of a planet are written into its economic and political record.

Behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: 'I feed on your energy.

This is their weakness, Duncan. Radicals always see matters in terms which are too simple—black and white, good and evil, them and us. By addressing complex matters in that way, they rip open a passage for chaos. The art of government as you call it, is the mastery of chaos.

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 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.

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

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.

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.