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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 5ad3b2b | The hunter does not seek dead game. | game hunter seek | Frank Herbert | |
| 8954bdb | Schools were started to train human talents... The Guild... emphasizes almost pure mathematics. Bene Gesserit performs... politics. The original Bene Gesserit school was directed by those who saw the need of a thread of continuity in human affairs. They saw there count be no such continuity without separating human stock from animal stock - for breeding purposes. | humanity mathematics politics | Frank Herbert | |
| b83188c | When we encounter personal problems, those things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. | perspective thought-life | Frank Herbert | |
| 47e0ed7 | He passed off the loss of a spice crawler with a gesture. The threat to men's lives had him in a rage. A leader such as that would command fanatic loyalty. He would be difficult to defeat. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 5127582 | We are plagued by a corrupt polity which promotes unlawful and/or immoral behaviour. Public interest has no practical significance in everyday behaviour among the ruling factions. The real problems of our world are not being confronted by those in power. In the guise of public service, they use whatever comes to hand for personal gain. They are insane with and for power. | power public-interest public-service ruling-class | Frank Herbert | |
| 8bdd548 | 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. | evolution fear instinct night survivalism | Frank Herbert | |
| 7b55fea | Is God troubled?" And her companion replied: "The sins of this universe would trouble anyone." -- | Frank Herbert | ||
| bc426f9 | People always want something more than immediate joy or that deeper sense called happiness. This is one of the secrets by which we shape the fulfillment of our designs. The something more assumes amplified power with people who cannot give it a name or who (most often the case) do not even suspect its existence. Most people only react unconsciously to such hidden forces. Thus, we have only to call a calculated something more into existence,.. | happiness meaning meaning-of-life mythology purpose something-greater unconscious zeitgeist | Frank Herbert | |
| 8f68640 | Prisons are needed only to provide the illusion that courts and police are effective. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 1ccaabf | The old woman was a witch shadow--hair like matted spiderwebs, hooded 'round darkness of features, eyes like glittering jewels. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 2fda49d | All rebels are closet aristocrats. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 3e467eb | We do not teach history; we recreate the experience. We follow the chain of consequences - the tracks of the beast in its forest. Look behind our words and you see the broad sweep of social behavior that no historian has ever touched. | experience history materialism personal-history social-history | Frank Herbert | |
| d3b763d | Herbert Pocket had a frank and easy way about him that was very taking. I had never seen anyone then, and I have never seen anyone since, who more strongly expressed to me, in every look and tone, a natural incapacity to do anything secret and mean. There was something wonderfully hopeful about his general air, and something that at the same time whispered to me he would never be very successful or rich. | herbert-pocket | Charles Dickens | |
| e81cb27 | The Reverend Mother must combine the seductive wiles of a courtesan with the untouchable majesty of a virgin goddess, holding these attributes in tension so long as the powers of her youth endure. For when youth and beauty have gone, she will find that the place-between, once occupied by tension, has become a wellspring of cunning and resourcefulness. | cunning wisdom | Frank Herbert | |
| 008f904 | Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. | Frank Herbert | ||
| e8036d1 | 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, government tends 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 | ||
| e62f17b | Remember that there exists a certain malevolence about the formation of any social order. It is the struggle for existence by an artificial entity. Despotism and slavery hover at the edges. Many injuries occur and, thus, the need for laws. The law develops its own power structure, creating more wounds and new injustices. Such trauma can be healed by cooperation, not by confrontation. The summons to cooperate identifies the healer. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 0e2914c | Those who would repeat the past must control the teaching of history. --Bene Gesserit Coda | Frank Herbert | ||
| 60143f1 | There are proven ways to win the loyalty of tough, strong, ferocious men: play on the certain knowledge of their superiority, the mystique of secret covenant, the esprit of shared suffering. | insularity leadership pride | Frank Herbert | |
| b610425 | Prophecy and prescience--How can they be put to the test in the face of the unanswered question? Consider: How much is actual prediction of the "wave form" (as Muad'Dib referred to his vision-image) and how much is the prophet shaping the future to fit the prophecy? What of the harmonics inherent in the act of prophecy? Does the prophet see the future or does he see a line of weakness, a fault or cleavage that he may shatter with words or d.. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 6ad9e92 | To be sighted in the land of the blind carries its own perils. | Frank Herbert | ||
| cbb2f4d | 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 | ||
| 77d8e7b | I know a profound pattern humans deny with words even while their actions affirm it. They say they seek security and quiet, conditions they call peace. Even as they speak, they create seeds of turmoil and violence. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 51916e0 | A creature who has spent his life creating one particular representation of his selfdom will die rather than become the antithesis of that representation | Frank Herbert | ||
| 902e96b | Arrakis makes us moral and ethical. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 6324d30 | If we deny the need for thought, Moneo, as some do, we lose the powers of reflection; we cannot define what our senses report. If we deny the flesh, we unwheel the vehicle which bears us. But if we deny emotion, we lose all touch with our internal universe. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 9bc3f7e | All rebels are closet aristocrats. That's why I can convert them so easily. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 3c2ea11 | How tempting it is to raise high walls and keep out change. Rot here in our own self-satisfied comfort. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 5d6aae7 | The Zensunni approach to birth," he said, urging her even faster, "is to wait without purpose in the state of highest tension. Do not compete with what is happening. To compete is to prepare for failure. Do not be trapped by the need to achieve anything. This way, you achieve everything." | Frank Herbert | ||
| 451a9a4 | Move slowly and the day of your revenge will come," Tuek said. "Speed is a device of Shaitan. Cool your sorrow-we've the diversions for it; three things there are that ease the heart-water, green grass, and the beauty of woman." | device diversions green-grass heart revenge shaitan sorrow speed water woman | Frank Herbert | |
| 14c7f03 | Chaos is no surprise. It has predictable characteristics. For one thing, it carries away order and strengthens the forces at the extremes. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 6d2352f | Jessica, hearing the voices, felt the depth of the experience, realized what terrible inhibitions there must be against shedding tears. She focused on the words: "He gives moisture to the dead." It was a gift to the shadow world--tears. They would be sacred beyond a doubt." | Frank Herbert | ||
| 5263817 | 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 | ||
| 71e6d42 | Police always observe that criminals prosper. It takes a pretty dull policeman to miss the fact that the position of authority is the most prosperous criminal position available. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 6f3e8f2 | A leader tries to perpetuate the conditions which demand his leadership. Thus, the leader requires the outsider. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 5e36895 | My son displays a general garment and you claim it's cut to your fit?" Jessica asked. "What a fascinating revelation." | jessica sick-burn | Frank Herbert | |
| 3d6a6c1 | The only past which endures lies wordlessly within you. | frank-herbert god-emperor-of-dune | Frank Herbert | |
| 712957a | Ideas are most to feared when they become actions," Paul said." | Frank Herbert | ||
| 1efa5ac | I wouldn't say she looked exactly wistful, but neither did she look as hard to get as a controlling interest in General Motors | hard-boiled | Raymond Chandler | |
| c534686 | if money is a science, then it is a dark science, darker than alchemy. It split away from Natural Philosophy millennia ago, and has gone on developing ever since, by its own rules. | Neal Stephenson | ||
| eb75b5a | If she screws up this delivery, that means she's double-crossing God, who may or may not exist, and in any case who is capable of forgiveness. The Mafia definitely exists and hews to a higher standard of obedience. | Neal Stephenson | ||
| 7f4630d | What he wasn't so good at was manipulating the internal states of other humans, getting them to see things his way, do things for him. His baseline attitude toward other humans wass that they could all just go fuck themselves and that he was not going to expend any effort whatsoever getting them to change the way they thought. This was probably rooted in a belief that hed been inculcated to him from the get-go: that there was an objective r.. | sales | Neal Stephenson | |
| a367bed | And then she figures out something important: These people aren't looking at her. They're not even giving her a second glance. They're all looking at Raven. And it's not just a case of celebrity watching or something like that. All of these Raft dudes, these tough scary homeboys of the sea, are scared shitless of this guy. And she's on a date with him. And it's just started. | Neal Stephenson | ||
| cf17010 | Izzy was full of people who were skewed toward the Asperger's end of the social spectrum, and there was no better way to get them to start talking than to ask them a technical question. | Neal Stephenson |