Frank Herbert

"My uncle Malky use to say that love was a bad bargain because you get no guarantees."

"Your uncle Malky was a wise man."

"He was stupid! Love needs no guarantees."

It is said that the only fear we cannot correct is the fear of our own mistakes.

"An Ixian machine? You defy the Jihad!" "There's a lesson in that, too. What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do without thinking. Things we do without thinking — there's the real danger."

Your Lord knows very well what is in your heart. Your soul suffices this day as a reckoner against you. I need no witnesses. You do not listen to your soul, but instead to your anger and your rage.

Travail and persecution are the lot of all who follow me.

"You know it's love when you want to give joy and damn the consequences."

Let there be no doubt that I am the assemblage of our ancestors, the arena in which they exercise my moments. They are my cells and I am their body. This is the fravashi of which I speak, the soul, the collective unconscious, the source of archetypes, the repository of all trauma and joy. I am the choice of their awakening. My samhadi is their samhadi. Their experiences are mine! Their knowledge distilled is my inheritance. Those billions are my one.

What is the most profound difference 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 their 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.

All proofs inevitably lead to propositions which have no proof! All things are known because we want to believe in them.

I tell you we are a marvel and my memories leave no doubt of this.

The three legs of the agreement-tripod are desire, data and doubt. Accuracy and honesty have nothing to do with it. ... Desire brings the participants together. Data sets the limits of their dialogue. Doubt frames their questions.

Governments may rise and fall for reasons which appear insignificant, Prince. What small events! An argument between two women... which way the wind blows on a certain day... a sneeze, a cough, the length of a garment or the chance collision of a fleck of sand and a courtier's eye. It is not always the majestic concerns of Imperial ministers which dictate the course of history, nor is it necessarily the pontifications of priests which move the hands of God.