Frank Herbert Chapterhouse Dune Quotes

Some never participate. Life happens to them. They get by on little more than dumb persistence and resist with anger or violence all things that might lift them out of resentment-filled illusions of security.
-Alma Mavis Taraza ~ Frank Herbert

He felt the inability to grieve as a terrible flaw. ~ Frank Herbert

Earth? Golden Age? Stilgar was irritated and puzzled. Why would Paul wish to discuss myths from the dawn of time? ~ Frank Herbert

Questions are my enemies. For my questions explode! ~ Frank Herbert

We will never forgive and we will never forget. ~ Frank Herbert

Muad'Dib: "If a child, an untrained person, an ignorant person, or an insane person incites trouble, it is the fault of authority for not predicting and preventing that trouble." O.C. ~ Frank Herbert

I hear the wind blowing across the desert and I see the moons of a winter night rising like great ships in the void. To them I make my vow: I will be resolute and make an art of government; I will balance my inherited past and become a perfect storehouse of my relic memories. And I will be known for kindliness more than for knowledge. My face will shine down the corridors of time for as long as humans exist. ~ Frank Herbert

Unceasing warfare gives rise to its own social conditions which have been similar in all epochs. People enter a permanent state of alertness to ward off attacks. You see the absolute rule of the autocrat. All new things become dangerous frontier districts - new planets, new economic areas to exploit, new ideas or new devices, visitors - everything suspect. Feudalism takes firm hold, sometimes disguised as a politbureau or similar structure, but always present. Hereditary succession follows the lines of power. The blood of the powerful dominates. ~ Frank Herbert

No matter how much we ask after the truth, self-awareness is often unpleasant. We do not feel kindly toward the Truthsayer. ~ Frank Herbert

Are you a believer or just playing safe? ~ Frank Herbert

It was a BuSab axiom that all power blocs tended toward aristocratic forms, that the descendants of decision makers dominated the power niches. ~ Frank Herbert

Radicals are only to be feared when you try to suppress them. You must demonstrate that you will use the best of what they offer. ~ Frank Herbert

The Baron could see the path ahead of him. One day, a Harkonnen would be Emperor. Not himself, and no spawn of his loins. But a Harkonnen. Not this Rabban he'd summoned, of course. But ~ Frank Herbert

Religious institutions perpetuate a moral master-servant relationship. They create an arena which attracts prideful human power-seekers with all of their nearsighted prejudices! ~ Frank Herbert

Any religion circles like a planet around a sun which it must use for its energy, upon which it depends for its very existence."
Her voice came barely above a whisper: "What do you see in your sun, Lord?"
"A universe of many windows through which I may peer. Whatever the window frames, that is what I see."
"The future?"
"The universe is timeless at its roots and contains therefore all times and all futures. ~ Frank Herbert

And he thought: I'm a seed. He ~ Frank Herbert

Individual human experience is not the overriding control factor in human behavior. The cellular social pattern dominates. ~ Frank Herbert

Is that the name you wish, Muad'Dib?" Stilgar asked. "I am an Atreides," Paul whispered, and then louder: "It's not right that I give up entirely the name my father gave me. Could I be known among you as Paul-Muad'Dib?" "You are Paul-Muad'Dib," Stilgar said. And ~ Frank Herbert

If you ask "Should we be in space?" you ask a nonsense question. We are in space. We will be in space. ~ Frank Herbert

Only those who recognize the value of war and exercise it have any degree of self-determination. ~ Frank Herbert

You see, Count, I have the Emperor's prison planet, Salusa Secundus, to inspire me. The ~ Frank Herbert

Piter: Ah-ah, Baron! Is it not regrettable you were unable to devise this delicious scheme by yourself?
Baron: Someday I will have you strangled, Piter.
Piter: Of a certainty, Baron. Enfin! But a kind act is never lost, eh?
Baron: Have you been chewing verite or semuta, Piter? ~ Frank Herbert

They say they seek security and quiet, the condition they call peace. Even as they speak they create the seeds of turmoil and violence. ~ Frank Herbert

The universe is just there; that's the only way a Fedaykin can view it and remain the master of his senses. The universe neither threatens nor promises. It holds things beyond our sway: the fall of a meteor, the eruption of a spiceblow, growing old and dying. These are the realities of this universe and they must be faced regardless of how you feel about them. You cannot fend off such realities with words. They will come at you in their own wordless way and then, then you will understand what is meant by "life and death." Understanding this, you will be filled with joy. - MUAD'DIB TO HIS FEDAYKIN ~ Frank Herbert

At the quantum level our universe can be seen as an indeterminate place, predictable in a statistical way only when you employ large enough numbers. Between that universe and a relatively predictable one where the passage of a single planet can be timed to a picosecond, other forces come into play. For the in-between universe where we find our daily lives, that which you believe is a dominant force. Your beliefs order the unfolding of daily events. If enough of us believe, a new thing can be made to exist. Belief structure creates a filter through which chaos is sifted into order. ~ Frank Herbert

Caution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding, passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve. ~ Frank Herbert

The voice of a rebeck echoed from somewhere behind him. The music echoed and echoed until it entered his head, still echoing. It suffused his body and he felt himself to be large, very large, not a child at all. And his skin was not his own. ~ Frank Herbert

Things could not be forever ordered and formulated. He had to find the rhythm of change and see between the changes to the changing itself. ~ Frank Herbert

What's a gom jabbar? ~ Frank Herbert

It supports a ruling class that lives as ruling classes have lived in all times while, beneath them, a semihuman mass of semislaves exists on the leavings… ~ Frank Herbert

The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows - a wall against the wind. ~ Frank Herbert

Peace demands solutions, but we never reach living solutions; we only work toward them. A fixed solution is, by definition, a dead solution. The trouble with peace is that it tends to punish mistakes instead of rewarding brilliance. - ~ Frank Herbert

Never obliterate a man unthinkingly, the way an entire fief might do it through some due process of law. Always do it for an overriding purpose - and know your purpose! ~ Frank Herbert

Black is a blind remembering, she thought. You listen for pack sounds, for the cries of those who hunted your ancestors in a past so ancient only your most primitive cells remember. The ears see. The nostrils see. ~ Frank Herbert

We have eternity, beloved."
"You may have eternity. I have only now."
"But this is eternity. ~ Frank Herbert

Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. ~ Frank Herbert

Memory never recaptures reality. Memory reconstructs. All reconstructions change the original, becoming external frames of reference that inevitably fall short. ~ Frank Herbert

There will be sadness," Alia intoned. "I remind you that all things are but beginning, forever beginning. Worlds wait to be conquered. Some within the sound of my voice will attain exalted destinies. You will sneer at the past, forgetting what I tell you now: within all differences there is unity. ~ Frank Herbert

The mind can go either direction under stress - toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training. ~ Frank Herbert

What's law? Control? Law filters chaos and what drips through? Serenity? Law
our highest ideal and our basest nature. Don't look too closely at the law. Do, and you'll find the rationalized interpretations, the legal casuistry, the precedents of convenience. You'll find the serenity, which is just another word for death. ~ Frank Herbert

Give as few orders as possible," his father had told him once long ago. "Once you've given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject. ~ Frank Herbert

Few people paid much attention to the importance of eyes when it came to seduction, he thought. It took a Bene Gesserit upbringing to make that point. Big breasts in a woman and hard loins in a man (that tightly muscular look to the buttocks) – these were naturally important in sexual matchings. But without the eyes, the rest of it could go for nothing. Eyes were essential. You could drown in the right kind of eyes, he had learned, sink right into them and be unaware of what was being done to you [...]. ~ Frank Herbert

Pain," she sniffed. "A human can override any nerve in the body. ~ Frank Herbert

There is a fundamental tension between science and freedom - no matter how science is viewed by its practitioners nor how freedom is sensed by those who believe they have it. ~ Frank Herbert