# Quote — Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

> You must remember that I have at my internal demand every expertise known to our history. This is the fund of energy I draw upon when I address the mentality of war. If you have not heard the moaning cries of the wounded and dying, you do not know about war. I have heard those cries in such numbers that they haunt me. I have cried out myself in the aftermath of battle. I have suffered wounds in every epoch-wounds from fist and club and rock, from shell-studded limb and bronze sword, from the mace and the cannon, from arrows and lasguns and the silent smothering of atomic dust, from biological invasions which blacken the tongue and drown the lungs, from the swift gush of flame and the silent working of slow poisons. . . and more I will not recount! I have seen and felt them all. To those who dare ask why I behave as I do, I say: With my memories, I can do nothing else. I am not a coward and once I was human.

- Author: [Frank Herbert](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert.md)
- Book: [God Emperor of Dune](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dune#God_Emperor_of_Dune_(1981)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/you-must-remember

## More from this book

> The defiling of a god is an ancient human tradition. Why should I be an exception?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/the-defiling-of-a-god.md)

> Odd as it may seem, great struggles such as the one you can see emerging from my journals are not always visible to the participants. Much depends on what people dream in the secrecy of their hearts. I have always been as concerned with the shaping of dreams as with the shaping of actions. Between the lines of my journals is the struggle with humankind's view of itself — a sweaty contest on a field where motives from our darkest past can well up out of an unconscious reservoir and become events with which we not only must live but contend. It is the hydra-headed monster which always attacks from your blind side. I pray, therefore, that when you have traversed my portion of the Golden Path you no longer will be innocent children dancing to music you cannot hear.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/odd-as-it-may.md)

> It is difficult to live in the present, pointless to live in the future and impossible to live in the past.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/it-is-difficult.md)