Frank Herbert Quotes

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.

My son will wear the title well, the Duke thought, and realized with a sudden chill that this was another death thought.

One moment of incompetence can be fatal.

We have a disturbed relationship with our past which religion cannot explain. We are primitive in unexplainable ways, our lives woven of the familiar and the strange, the reasonable and the insane.

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.

I have said: "Blow out the lamp! Day is here!" And you keep saying: "Give me a lamp so I can find the day.

When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong - faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late.

The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called "spannungsbogen" -- which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.

the meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture - it begins in the dignity with which we treat the dead

And the question of Wester religion,” Flattery said, “is: What lies beyond death? But the question of the Zen master is: What lies beyond waking?

We will never forgive and we will never forget.

He learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.

They are not mad. They're trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.

Democracy is susceptible to being led astray by having scapegoats paraded in front of the electorate. Get the rich, the greedy, the criminals, the stupid leader and so on ad nauseam.

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.

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.

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

A killer with the manners of a rabbit - this is the most dangerous kind.

To accept a little death is worse than death itself.

No matter how much we ask after the truth, self-awareness is often unpleasant. We do not feel kindly toward the Truthsayer.

If you focus your awareness only upon your own rightness, then you invite the forces of opposition to overwhelm you.

They compose poems to their knives.

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.

Chance is the nature of our universe. […] madness represents a chaotic reservoir of surprises. Some surprises can be valuable.

What the eyes had seen could not be erased.

Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual. -Words of Muad'dib by Princess Irulan.

At the quantum level our universe can be seen as an indeterminate place, predictable in a statistical way only when you employ large enough numbers. Between that universe and a relatively predictable one where the passage of a single planet can be timed to a picosecond, other forces come into play. For the in-between universe where we find our daily lives, that which you believe is a dominant force. Your beliefs order the unfolding of daily events. If enough of us believe, a new thing can be made to exist. Belief structure creates a filter through which chaos is sifted into order.

The universe is full of doors.

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, define it and give it shape, then people will follow.

I come only to ask a simple question. Is Muad'Dib's death to be followed by the moral suicide of all men? Is that the inevitable aftermath of a Messiah?

I warn you that ignorance thrives on hysteria.

This wise man observed that wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.

There is only one true wealth in all the universe--living time.

He realized suddenly that it was one thing to see the past occupying the present, but the true test of prescience was to see the past in the future. Things persisted in not being what they seemed.

We accept too damned many things on the explanations of people who could have good reasons for lying.

Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.

The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.

You can not go on forever stealing what you need without regard to those who come after.

Education is no substitute for intelligence. That elusive quality is defined only in part by puzzle-solving ability. It is in the creation of new puzzles reflecting what your senses report that you round out the definition.

He's taking the change well?" She asked.Except for getting a bit overtired. He's excited, but what 15-year-old wouldn't be under these circumstances?

It is far better to win a battle through skilled leadership and wise decisions than violence and bloodshed. It may not seem as glorious to the uninitiated, but in the end it results in fewer wounds--of any kind.

Military foolishness is ultimately suicidal. They believe that by risking death they pay the price of any violent behavior against enemies of their own choosing. They have the invader mentality, that false sense of freedom from responsibility for your own actions.

motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches.

Do you know what guerrillas often say? They claim that their rebellions are invulnerable to economic warfare because they have no economy, that they are parasitic on those they would overthrow. The fools merely fail to access the coin in which they must inevitably pay. The pattern is inexorable in its degenerative failures. You see it repeated in the systems of slavery, of welfare states, of caste-ridden religions, of socializing bureaucracies -- in any system in which creates and maintains dependencies. Too long a parasite and you cannot exist without a host.

It has occurred to me more than once that holy boredom is good and sufficient reason for the invention of free will.

Try looking into that place where you dare not look! You'll find me there, staring out at you!

Religion, too, is a weapon. What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government?

The flesh surrenders itself. Eternity takes back its own. Our bodies stirred these waters briefly, danced with a certain intoxication before the love of life and self, dealt with a few strange ideas, then submitted to the instruments of Time. What can we say of this? I occurred. I am not...yet, I occurred.

Irreverence is a most necessary ingredient of religion. Not to speak of its importance in philosophy. Irreverence is the only way left to us for testing our universe.

One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp too strongly is to be taken over by power, and thus to become its victim.

And loyalty is a valued commodity. It can be sold . . . not bought, but sold.