"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn to the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
— Frank Herbert (Dune)

"Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible."
— Frank Herbert

"There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story."
— Frank Herbert

"Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your life. The object can be stated this way: Live the best life you can. Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck.
Darwi Odrade - Chapterhouse: Dune"
— Frank Herbert (Chapterhouse: Dune)

"Truth suffers from too much analysis."
— Frank Herbert (Dune Messiah)

"A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it."
— Frank Herbert

"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain."
— Frank Herbert (Dune)

"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 to late."
— Frank Herbert (Dune)

"What do you despise? By this are you truly known."
— Frank Herbert

"We can say that Maud'Dib 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."
— Frank Herbert (Dune)

"The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth."
— Frank Herbert (Children of Dune)

"The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion."
— Frank Herbert (Children of Dune)

"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."
— Frank Herbert (Dune Messiah)

"Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic"
— Frank Herbert (Dune)

"There is no escape - we pay for the violence of our ancestors"
— Frank Herbert

"The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action."
— Frank Herbert

"Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?"
— Frank Herbert

"Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who so survive."
— Frank Herbert

"Here lies a toppled god.
His fall was not a small one.
We did but build his pedestal,
A narrow and a tall one.

Tleilaxu Epigram"
— Frank Herbert (Dune Messiah)

"The child who refuses to travel in the father's harness, this is the symbol of man's most unique capability. "I do not have to be what my father was. I do not have to obey my father's rules or even believe everything he believed. It is my strength as a human that I can make my own choices of what to believe and what not to believe, of what to be and what not to be.""
— Frank Herbert (Children of Dune)

"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."
— Frank Herbert (Children of Dune)

"The future remains uncertain and so it should, for it is the canvas upon which we paint our desires. Thus always the human condition faces a beautifully empty canvas. We possess only this moment in which to dedicate ourselves continuously to the sacred presence which we share and create."
— Frank Herbert (Children of Dune)

"A person needs new experiences. They jar something deep inside, allowing you to grow. Without them, it sleeps- seldom to awaken. The sleeper must awaken. "
— Frank Herbert

""Grave this on your memory, lad: A world is supported by four things..." she held up four big-knuckled fingers. "...the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these things are as nothing..." She closed her fingers into a fist. "...without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!""
— Frank Herbert (Dune)

"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."
— Frank Herbert (Dune)

""What does a mirror look at?""
— Frank Herbert (Chapterhouse: Dune)

"If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual. "
— Frank Herbert

"“Growth is limited by that necessity which is present in the least amount.”"
— Frank Herbert

" This is the awe-inspiring universe of magic: There are no atoms, only waves and motions all around. Here, you discard all belief in barriers to understanding. You put aside understanding itself. This universe cannot be seen, cannot be heard, cannot be detected in any way by fixed perceptions. It is the ultimate void where no preordained screens occur upon which forms may be projected. You have only one awareness here — the screen of the magi: Imagination! Here, you learn what it is to be human. You are a creator of order, of beautiful shapes and systems, an organizer of chaos."
— Frank Herbert (Heretics of Dune)

"The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience."
— Frank Herbert (Dune, 40th Anniversary Edition)

"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."
— Frank Herbert (Dune Messiah)

"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man."
— Frank Herbert (Dune)

"Guilt starts as a feeling of failure."
— Frank Herbert

"The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy.
"
— Frank Herbert

"There is no escape we pay for the violence of our ancestors.

--from The Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib by the Princess Irulan"
— Frank Herbert (Dune)

"The singular multiplicity of this universe draws my deepest attention. It is a thing of ultimate beauty.

Leto II"
— Frank Herbert

"Law is the ultimate science."
— Frank Herbert (Dune)

"A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. "
— Frank Herbert

"The constitution is social power mobilized and it has no conscience. It can crush the highest and the lowest, removing all dignity and individuality. It has an unstable balance point and no limitations."
— Frank Herbert (Dune Messiah)

"If wishes were fishes, we'd all cast nets."
— Frank Herbert (Dune)

"Nature does not make mistakes. Right and wrong are human categories."
— Frank Herbert

"A quote from Frank Herbert
"... Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain"

- from Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear,
in the book Dune by Frank Herbert (1920-1986) "
— Frank Herbert

"The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion."
— Frank Herbert (Children of Dune)

"To be a god can ultimately become boring and degrading. There'd be reason enough for the invention of free will! A god might wish to escape into sleep and be alive only in the unconscious projections of his dream-creatures."
— Frank Herbert

"There exists no separation between gods and men; one blends softly casual into the other. - Proverbs of Muad'dib"
— Frank Herbert

""My family sat in their pool courtyard," Harah said, "in air bathed by the moisture that arose from the spray of a fountain. There was a tree of portyguls, round and deep in color, near at hand. There was a basket with mish mish and baklawa and mugs of liban--all manner of good things to eat. In our gardens and in our flocks, there was peace... peace in all the land."

"Life was full of happiness until the raiders came," Alia said.

"Blood ran cold at the scream of our friends," Jessica said. And she felt the memories rushing through her out of all those other pasts she shared.

"La, la, la, the women cried," said Harah."
— Frank Herbert (Dune, 40th Anniversary Edition)

"How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him."
— Frank Herbert

"Most men go through life unchallenged, except at the final moment."
— Frank Herbert (God Emperor of Dune)

"the mind can go either way under stress - towards positive or negative........the way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training"
— Frank Herbert

"I am not the river I am the net.

-attributed to Tolstoy in Chapterhouse Dune"
— Frank Herbert (Chapterhouse: Dune)