Frank Herbert Quotes (98 Quotes)

Kindness is the beginning of cruelty.

When law and duty are one, united by religion, you never become fully conscious, fully aware of yourself. You are always a little less than an individual.

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

Truth suffers from too much analysis.

Something cannot emerge from nothing.

Journalism is the entertainment business.

Here lies a fallen god His fall was not a small one, We did but build his pedestal An narrow and a tall one

Question Who governs the governors Answer Entropy.

The proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On that path lies danger.

The difference between sentiment and being sentimental is the following: Sentiment is when a driver swerves out of the way to avoid hitting a rabbit on the road. Being sentimental is when the same driver, when swerving away from the rabbit, hits a pedestrian.

Good government 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.

If Wishes were fishes, we'd all cast nets.

When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way.

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?

....the most persistent principles of the universe are accident and error.

The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.

Religion often partakes of the myth of progress that shields us from the terrors of an uncertain future.

Wealth is a tool of freedom, but the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.

Justice belongs to those who claim it, but let the claimant beware lest he create new injustice by his claim and thus set the bloody pendulum of revenge into its inexorable motion

The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.

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.

One of the best things to come out of the home computer revolution could be the general and widespread understanding of how severely limited logic really is.

Humans are almost always lonely.

He who can destroy a thing, can control a thing.

To endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe. You cannot hire a wise man or any other intellect to solve it for you. There's no writ of inquest or calling of witness to provide answers.

Enemies make you stronger, allies make you weaker.

When politics and religion are intermingled, a people is suffused with a sense of invulnerability, and gathering speed in their forward charge, they fail to see the cliff ahead of them.

What do you despise? By this are you truly known.

This is the fallacy of power ultimately it is effective only in an absolute, a limited universe. But the basic lesson of our relativistic universe is that things change. Any power must always meet a greater power.

To suspect your own mortality is to know the beginning of terror, to learn irrefutably that you are mortal is to know the end of terror.

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

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

Understanding requires words. Some things cannot be reduced to words. There are things that can only be experienced wordlessly... The act of saying that things exist that cannot be described in words shakes a universe where words are supreme.

Anything less than abject submission has to have some attack in it.

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

The stakes in conflict do not change. Battle determines who will control the wealth or its equivalent.

Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.

Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.

No matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no matter the developments of life and society nor the complexity of the machinehuman interface, there always comes interludes of lonely power when the course of humankind, the very future of humankind, depends upon the relatively simple actions of single individuals.

To attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing the Darkness. It cannot be.

It is a wise man that does know the contented man is never poor, whilst the discontented man is never rich.

It is by will alone that I set my mind in motion.

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

There are limits to power, as those who put their hopes in a constitution always discover

Hey, that turned out not to be such a good idea. I'd better not do that anymore.

Theres no secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves.

Respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality.

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.