Dune Herbert Quotes

#1. Dune was a world of paradox now - a world under siege, yet the center of power. To come under siege, he decided, was the inevitable fate of power.

Frank Herbert

#2. There's coffee for those who want it,' the Duke said.

Frank Herbert

#3. Among my father's most important messages were that governments lie to protect themselves and they make incredibly stupid decisions.

Brian Herbert

#4. All persons are contained within a single individual, just as all time is in a moment, and the entire universe is in a grain of sand.

Brian Herbert

#5. To quote from another gospel, DUNE by Frank Herbert, 'Fear is the mind-killer.' ... Jesus was the original Muad'dib.

Stephen Colbert

#6. Piter spoke to Jessica. "I'd thought of binding you by a threat held over your son, but I begin to see that would not have worked. I let emotion cloud reason. Bad policy for a Mentat."
-Piter De Vries

Frank Herbert

#7. But the Butlerians turn fear into violence and panic into a weapon. By creating imaginary problems and raising the specter of nonexistent enemies, they transform common people into a wild herd that destroys everything they do not understand.

Brian Herbert

#8. The assumption that humans exist within an essentially impermanent universe, taken as an operational precept, demands that the intellect become a totally aware balancing instrument.

Frank Herbert

#9. A killer with the manners of a rabbit - this is the most dangerous kind.

Frank Herbert

#10. Heroic leaders often made mistakes ... mistakes that were amplified by the number of followers who were held in thrall by charisma. (Introduction to Dune Messiah)

Brian Herbert

#11. You aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgement of your existence.

Frank Herbert

#12. To be a god can ultimately become boring and degrading. There'd be reason enough for the invention of free will! A god might wish to escape into sleep and be alive only in the unconscious projections of his dream-creatures.

Frank Herbert

#13. In Dune and Dune Messiah, he [Frank Herbert] was cautioning against pride and overconfidence, that form of narcissism described in Greek tragedies that invariably led to the great fall.

Brian Herbert

#14. Bless the Maker and His water.
Bless the coming and going of Him.
May His passage cleanse the world.
May He keep the world for His people.

Frank Herbert

#15. The one-eyed view of our universe says The one-eyed view of our universe says you must not look far afield for problems. Such problems may never arrive. Instead, tend to the wolf within your fences. The packs ranging outside may not even exist.
- The Azhar Book; Shamra I:4

Frank Herbert

#16. You who have defeated us say to yourselves that Babylon is fallen and its works have been overturned. I say to you still that man remains on trial, each man in his own dock. Each man is a little war.

Frank Herbert

#17. What does a mirror look at?

Frank Herbert

#18. Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife - chopping off what's incomplete and saying: 'Now, it's complete because it's ended here.'
- from Collected Sayings of Maud'Dib' by the Princess Irulan

Frank Herbert

#19. Come, come," the Baron said. "We don't have much time and pain is quick. Please don't bring it to this, my dear Duke." The Baron looked up at Piter who stood at Leto's shoulder. "Piter doesn't have all his tools here, but I'm sure he could improvise."
"Improvisation is sometimes the best, Baron.

Frank Herbert

#20. Hope clouds observation.

Frank Herbert

#21. Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who so survive.

Frank Herbert

#22. Ah! Indeed but! But he consumes too much spice, eats it like candy. Look at his eyes! He might have come directly from the Arrakeen labor pool. Efficient, Piter, but he's still emotional and prone to passionate outbursts. Efficient, Piter, but he still can err.
-Baron Vladimir

Frank Herbert

#23. I see us giving love to each other in a time of quiet between storms. It's what we were meant to do.

Frank Herbert

#24. Ah, Hah! But you see, Baron, I know as a Mentat when you will send the executioner. You will hold back just so long as I am useful. To move sooner would be wasteful and I'm yet of much use. I know what it is you learned from that lovely Dune planet - waste not? True, Baron?
-Piter De Vries

Frank Herbert

#25. Sometimes I wonder about Piter," the Baron said. "I cause pain out of necessity, but he ... I swear he takes a positive delight in it."
-Baron Vladimir

Frank Herbert

#26. Humans are born with a susceptibility to that most persistent and debilitating disease of intellect: self-deception. The best of all possible worlds and the worst get their dramatic coloration from it. As nearly as we can determine, there is no natural immunity. Constant alertness is required.

Frank Herbert

#27. There was a man so wise,
He jumped into
A sandy place
And burnt out both his eyes!
And when he knew his eyes were gone,
He offered no complaint.
He summoned up a vision
And made himself a saint.
-Children's Verse
from History of Muad'dib

Frank Herbert

#28. I'll keep writing 'Dune' books as long as my mother's spirit continues to support the project.

Brian Herbert

#29. We tend to become like the worst in those we oppose.

Frank Herbert

#30. I succumbed to the lure of the oracle, he thought.
And he sensed that succumbing to this lure might be to fix himself upon a single-track life. Could it be, he wondered, that the oracle didn't tell the future? Could it be that the oracle made the future?

Frank Herbert

#31. (Dune's Frank) Herbert made religion the inescapable instrument of cultural change.

Joseph Bottum

#32. The scarce water of Dune is an exact analog of oil scarcity. CHOAM is OPEC.

Frank Herbert

#33. If I could go back in time and tell my younger self that eventually that I'd become very successful writing Dune books after Frank Herbert's death, I would have laughed myself silly, I think, at how strange that prospect would be.

Kevin J. Anderson

#34. As long as you believe yourself helpless, you remain helpless even though resolute.

Frank Herbert

#35. My Sihaya,' he said as he held her, 'I have loved you for five thousand years.

Brian Herbert

#36. The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.

Frank Herbert

#37. Think of what this planet has done to us. Dune took my Duke and my son and shattered all our hopes and dreams as a family. It swallows people.

Brian Herbert

#38. The most precious substance in the universe is the spice Melange ... The spice extends life ... expands consciousness ... gives them the ability to fold space ... that is, travel to any part of the universe without moving.

Frank Herbert

#39. 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

#40. Dune Messiah is the most misunderstood of Frank Herbert's novels. The reasons for this are as fascinating and complex as the renowned author himself.

Brian Herbert