The dice cannot read their own spots.
FRANK HERBERT, Dune Messiah
Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.
FRANK HERBERT, Children of Dune
There's a lesson in every temptation.
FRANK HERBERT, God Emperor of Dune
Words can carry any burden we wish. All that's required is agreement and a tradition upon which to build.
FRANK HERBERT, God Emperor of Dune
Too much knowledge never makes for simple decisions.
FRANK HERBERT, Children of Dune
Ambitions tend to remain undisturbed by realities.
FRANK HERBERT, Children of Dune
If you live in bad faith, lies will appear to you like the truth.
FRANK HERBERT, God Emperor of Dune
It is not the present which unfluences the future, thou fool, but the future which forms the present. You have it all backward. Since the future is set, an unfolding of events which will assure that future is fixed and inevitable.
FRANK HERBERT, Children of Dune
War is the most readily available form of chaos.
FRANK HERBERT, God Emperor of Dune
One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp too strongly is to be taken over by power, and thus to become its victim.
FRANK HERBERT, Children of Dune
The future remains uncertain and so it should, for it is the canvas upon which we paint our desires. Thus always the human condition faces a beautifully empty canvas.
FRANK HERBERT, Children of Dune
Machine makers always run the risk of becoming totally machine.
FRANK HERBERT, God Emperor of Dune
Membership in a conspiracy, as in an army, frees people from the sense of personal responsibility.
FRANK HERBERT, God Emperor of Dune
If you want immortality, then deny form. Whatever has form has mortality. Beyond form is the formless, the immortal.
FRANK HERBERT, God Emperor of Dune
Atrocity is recognized as such by victim and perpetrator alike, by all who learn about it at whatever remove. Atrocity has no excuses, no mitigating argument. Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. It is self-perpetuating upon itself--a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred.
FRANK HERBERT, Children of Dune
The best prophets lead you up to the curtain and let you peer through for yourself.
FRANK HERBERT, God Emperor of Dune
We never get far from wealth and all of its masks when we deal with power.
FRANK HERBERT, Children of Dune
Wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.
FRANK HERBERT, God Emperor of Dune
Night held its fear smells and its things which came with slithering sounds.
FRANK HERBERT, Children of Dune
Enemies strengthn you. Allies weaken you.
FRANK HERBERT, God Emperor of Dune
Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, governments tend more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class--whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.
FRANK HERBERT, Children of Dune
Most civilization is based on cowardice. It's so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame.
FRANK HERBERT, God Emperor of Dune
One must cast off old agonies as a snake casts off its skin--only to grow a new set and accept all of their limitations.
FRANK HERBERT, Children of Dune
If we deny emotion, we lose all touch with our internal universe.
FRANK HERBERT, God Emperor of Dune
Infinity? It attracts us like a floodlight in the night.
FRANK HERBERT, Children of Dune
Only gods can safely risk perfection ... it's a dangerous thing for a man.
FRANK HERBERT, Dune Messiah
Words are such gross machinery, so primitive and ambiguous.
FRANK HERBERT, Dune Messiah
