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Famous Frank Herbert Quotes

“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. - Politics as Repeat Phenomenon: Bene Gesserit Training Manual”

PhilosophyGovernment
Book:Children of Dune
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“Democracy is a stupid idea anyway!” “We agree. It’s demagogue-prone. That’s a disease to which electoral systems are vulnerable. Yet demagogues are easy to identify. They gesture a lot and speak with pulpit rhythms, using words that ring of religious fervor and god-fearing sincerity. Sincerity with nothing behind it takes so much practice, Dama. The practice can always be detected.” "By Truthsayers?" "By anyone who learns the signs: Repetition. Great attempts to keep your attention on words. You must pay no attention to words. Watch what the person does. That way you learn the motives.”

TruthPoliticsHonesty
Book:Chapterhouse: Dune
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“What is the most profound difference between between us, between you and me? You already know it. It's these ancestral memories. Mine come at me in the full glare of awareness. Yours work from your blind side. Some call it instinct or fate. The memories apply leverages to each of us - on what we think and what we do. You think you are immune to such influences? I am Galileo. I stand here and tell you: 'Yet it moves.' That which moves can exert its force in ways no mortal power ever before dared stem. I am here to dare this.”

FateInstinctMemoryAncestral Memory
Book:God Emperor of Dune
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“They’re accustomed to seeing the future, Paul thought. In this place and time they’re blind…even as I am. And he sampled the time-winds, sensing the turmoil, the storm nexus that now focused on this moment place. Even the faint gaps were closed now. Here was the unborn jihad, he knew. Here was the race consciousness that he had known once as his own terrible purpose. Here was reason enough for a Kwisatz Haderach or a Lisan al-Gaib or even the halting schemes of the Bene Gesserit. The race of humans had felt its own dormancy, sensed itself grown stale and knew now only the need to experience turmoil in which the genes would mingle and the strong new mixtures survive. All humans were alive as an unconscious single organism in this moment, experiencing a kind of sexual heat that could override any barrier.”

HumanityDestinyFutureConnectionProphecy
Book:DUNE
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“I try to tell them that all words are plastic. Word images begin to distort in the instant of utterance. Ideas imbedded in a language require that particular language for expression. This is the very essence of the meaning within the word exotic. See how it begins to distort? Translation squirms in the presence of the exotic. The Galach which I speak here imposes itself. It is an outside frame of reference, a particular system. Dangers lurk in all systems. Systems incorporate the unexamined beliefs of their creators. Adopt a system, accept its beliefs, and you help strengthen the resistance to change.”

LanguageChangeMeaningConservatismTranslationSystems
Book:God Emperor of Dune
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“In all of my universe I have seen no law of nature, unchanging and inexorable. This universe presents only changing relationships which are sometimes seen as laws by short-lived awareness. These fleshly sensoria which we call self are ephemera withering in the blaze of infinity, fleetingly aware of temporary conditions which confine our activities and change as our activities change. If you must label the absolute, use it's proper name: Temporary.”

LifeTimeChangeSubjectivity
Book:God Emperor of Dune
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“There exists a limit to the force even the most powerful may apply without destroying themselves. Judging this limit is the true artistry of government. Misuse of power is the fatal sin. The law cannot be a tool of vengeance, never a hostage, nor a fortification against the martyrs it has created. You cannot threaten any individual and escape the consequences.”

GovernmentLawForceSinTrueConsequencesVengeanceArtistryLimitFatalTool
Book:Dune Messiah
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“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 [...].”

EyesSeductionDrowning
Author:Frank Herbert
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“What you did, Jessica, and why you did it - we both know. But kindness forces me to tell you there's little chance your lad will be the Bene Gesserit Totality. You mustn't let yourself hope too much." Jessica shook tears from the corners of her eyes. It was an angry gesture. "You make me feel like a little girl again - reciting my first lesson." She forced the words out:"Humans must never submit to animals." A dry sob shook her. In a low voice, she said:"I've been so lonely." "It should be one of the tests," the old woman said. "Humans are almost always lonely.”

HumanityLonelinessTest
Book:DUNE
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