Frank Herbert > Quotes

“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

“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

“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

“The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“What do you despise? By this are you truly known.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Truth suffers from too much analysis.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“Education is no substitute for intelligence.”
― Frank Herbert

“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires, seek discipline and find your liberty.
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― 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

“The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.”
― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

“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

“The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth.”
― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

“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

“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

“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

“There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

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

“If wishes were fishes, we'd all cast nets.”
― Frank Herbert, 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

“Nature does not make mistakes. Right and wrong are human categories.”
― Frank Herbert

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.”
― Frank Herbert

“Guilt starts as a feeling of failure.”
― Frank Herbert

“He who controls the spice controls the universe.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Try looking into that place where you dare not look! You'll find me there, staring out at you!”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“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

“Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife - chopping off what's incomplete and saying: 'Now, it's complete because it's ended here.'

- from "Collected Sayings of Maud'Dib'' by the Princess Irulan”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. ”
― Frank Herbert

“There's hope left in these dusty chords. There's a song left in our rusty hearts. We are torn and frayed but love remains.”
― Frank Herbert

“Hope clouds observation.”
― Frank Herbert, 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

“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

“Law is the ultimate science.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“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

“What does a mirror look at?”
― Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune

“It is so shocking to find out how many people do not believe that they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Good governance never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders.”
― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

“Whether a thought is spoken or not it is a real thing and has powers of reality.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

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

“The people who can destroy a thing, they control it.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“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.”
― Frank Herbert