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

“There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.”
― Frank Herbert

“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.”
― Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune

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

“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

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

“Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.”
― Frank Herbert

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

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

“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

“Hope clouds observation.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“The mind can go either direction under stress—toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training.”
― Frank Herbert, 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.
- Politics as Repeat Phenomenon: Bene Gesserit Training Manual”
― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

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

“Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.”
― Frank Herbert

“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, Dune

“Truth suffers from too much analysis.

-Ancient Fremen Saying”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. 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

“Fear is the mind-killer.”
― Frank Herbert , Dune

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Survival is the ability to swim in strange water.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

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

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

“Do actions agree with words? There's your measure of reliability. Never confine yourself to the words.”
― Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune

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