Frank Herbert Quotes

One of the most terrible moments in a boy’s life,” Paul said, “is when he discovers his father and mother are human beings who share a love that he can never quite taste. It’s a loss, an awakening to the fact that the world is there and here and we are in it alone. The moment carries its own truth; you can’t evade it. I heard my father when he spoke of my mother. She’s not the betrayer, Gurney.

Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over any future. Scratch a liberal and find a closet aristocrat.

Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free.

The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows — a wall against the wind. This is the willow’s purpose.

There is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe. It has symmetry, elegance, and grace — those qualities you find always in that which the true artist captures. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, in the way sand trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of the creosote bush or the pattern of its leaves. We try to copy these patterns in our lives and our society, seeking the rhythms, the dances, the forms that comfort. Yet, it is possible to see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. It is clear that the ultimate pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all things move toward death.

Educational bureaucracies dull a child’s questing sensitivity.

We know the major conditions wherein this large populace may turn upon its keepers -
One: When they find a leader. This is the most volatile threat to the powerful; they must retain control of leaders.
Two: When the populace recognises its chains. Keep the populace blind and unquestioning.
Three: When the populace perceives a hope of escape from bondage. They must never even believe that escape is possible!

Delay is as dangerous as the wrong answer.

The truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it.

Shield!” the old woman snapped. “You well know the weakness there! Shield your son too much, Jessica, and he’ll not grow strong enough to fulfill any destiny.

Another might have missed the tension, but she had trained him in the Bene Gesserit Way - in the minutiae of observation.

"Deceit is a tool of statecraft," Irulan agreed.
"There are limits to power, as those who put their hopes in a constitution always discover," Paul said.

I didn't want to be different.
I wanted to be able to laugh
But I'm sister to an Emperor who's worshiped as a god. People fear me. I never wanted to be feared.
I don't want to be part of history, I just want to be loved . . . and to love.

"I only believe in certain kinds of hell," she said, and again she was looking at him, the green eyes steady.
"To each his own, eh?"
"You said it; I didn’t."

How do we approach the study of Muad’Dib’s father? A man of surpassing warmth and surprising coldness was the Duke Leto Atreides. Yet, many facts open the way to this Duke: his abiding love for his Bene Gesserit lady; the dreams he held for his son; the devotion with which men served him. You see him there — a man snared by Destiny, a lonely figure with his light dimmed behind the glory of his son. Still, one must ask: What is the son but an extension of the father?