# Quote — Frank Herbert, Heretics of Dune

> When I was writing Dune there was no room in my mind for concerns about the book's success or failure. I was concerned only with the writing. Six years of research had preceded the day I sat down to put the story together, and the interweaving of the many plot layers I had planned required a degree of concentration I had never before experienced.
>
> It was to be a story exploring the myth of the Messiah.
>
> It was to produce another view of a human-occupied planet as an energy machine.
>
> It was to penetrate the interlocked workings of politics and economics.
>
> It was to be an examination of absolute prediction and its pitfalls.
>
> It was to have an awareness drug in it and tell what could happen through dependence on such a substance.
>
> Potable water was to be an analog for oil and for water itself, a substance whose supply diminishes each day.
>
> It was to be an ecological novel, then, with many overtones, as well as a story about people and their human concerns with human values, and I had to monitor each of these levels at every stage in the book.
>
> There wasn't room in my head to think about much else.

- Author: [Frank Herbert](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert.md)
- Book: [Heretics of Dune](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/heretics-of-dune.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dune#Heretics_of_Dune_(1984)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/heretics-of-dune/when-i-was

## More from this book

> We are not looking at a new state of matter but at a newly recognized relationship between consciousness and matter, which provides a more penetrating insight into the workings of prescience. The oracle shapes a projected inner universe to produce new external probabilities out of forces that are not understood. There is no need to understand these forces before using them to shape the physical universe. Ancient metal workers had no need to understand the molecular and submolecular complexities of their steel, bronze, copper, gold, and tin. They invented mystical powers to describe the unknown while they continued to operate their forges and wield their hammers.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/heretics-of-dune/we-are-not.md)

> Most discipline is hidden discipline, designed not to liberate but to limit. Do not ask Why? Be cautious with How? Why? leads inexorably to paradox. How? traps you in a universe of cause and effect. Both deny the infinite.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/heretics-of-dune/most-discipline-is-hidden.md)

> You could drag humankind almost anywhere by manipulating the enormous energies of procreation. You could goad humans into actions they would never have believed possible. ...This energy must have an outlet. Bottle it up and it becomes monstrously dangerous. Redirect it and it will sweep over anything in its path. This is an ultimate secret of all religions.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/heretics-of-dune/you-could-drag.md)