Frank Herbert famous quotes

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

#Inspirational #Funny #Life

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

#Inspirational #Motivational #Fear

The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.
-- Frank Herbert

#Love #Inspirational #Life

Most lives are a flight from selfhood. Most prefer the truths of the stable. You stick your head into the stanchions and munch contentedly until you die. Others use you for their purposes. Not once do you look outside the stable to lift your head and be your own creature.
-- Frank Herbert

#Self #Looks #Purpose

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

#Real #Writing #Stories

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities.
-- Frank Herbert

#War #Government #Personality

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

#Power #Political #Doe

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

#Knowledge #Caring #Discovery

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

#Government #Class #Aristocracy

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.
-- Frank Herbert

#Government #People #Drunk

The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it.
-- Frank Herbert

#Science #Fiction #Sometimes

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

#Men #Thinking #Machines

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

#Life #Trust #People

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

#Self #Desire #Quality

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

#Strong #Moving #Greatness

There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man - with human flesh.
-- Frank Herbert

#Father #Men #Flesh

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
-- Frank Herbert

#People #Gathering #Cliffs

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

#Numbers #Space #Molecules

Face your fears or they will climb over your back.
-- Frank Herbert

#Faces #Face Your Fears #Climbs

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

#Inspirational #Training #Lessons

If wishes were fishes, we'd all cast nets.
-- Frank Herbert

#Wish #Casts #Fishes

Truth suffers from too much analysis.
-- Frank Herbert

#Wisdom #Suffering #Analysis

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

#Player #Games #Missing

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

#Suffering #Purpose #Empires

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

#Love Life #Self #Ideas

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

#Future #Desire #Faces

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

#Sleep #Needs #Jars

Most civilisation is based on cowardice. It's so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame.
-- Frank Herbert

#Children #Teaching #Law

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

#Life #Real #Princess

Caution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding, passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve.
-- Frank Herbert

#Thinking #People #Gliding

Do actions agree with words? There's your measure of reliability. Never confine yourself to the words.
-- Frank Herbert

#Reliability #Action #Agree

Polish comes from the cities; wisdom from the desert.
-- Frank Herbert

#Cities #Desert #Polish

Anything outside yourself, this you can see and apply your logic to it. But it’s a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, these things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. We tend to flounder around, blaming everything but the actual, deep-seated thing that’s really chewing on us.
-- Frank Herbert

#Encounters #Logic #Blame

Life - all life - is in the service of life. Necessary nutrients are made available to life by life in greater and greater richness as the diversity of life increases. The entire landscape comes alive, filled with relationships and relationships within relationships.
-- Frank Herbert

#Diversity #Alive #Landscape

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

#Freedom #Discipline #History

He who controls the spice controls the universe.
-- Frank Herbert

#Spices #Science Fiction #Universe

Guilt starts as a feeling of failure.
-- Frank Herbert

#Feelings #Guilt #Thrive

FEAR IS THE MIND-KILLER. FEAR IS THE LITTLE-DEATH THAT BRINGS TOTAL OBLITERATION.
-- Frank Herbert

#Mind #Littles #Killers

You aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgement of your existence.
-- Frank Herbert

#Thinking #Judgement #Risk

Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.
-- Frank Herbert

#Belief #Dangerous

The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows - a wall against the wind.
-- Frank Herbert

#Wall #Wind #One Day

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

#Wise #Men #Doe

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

#Wise #Thinking #Government

Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect any who seek it.
-- Frank Herbert

#Power #Corruption

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

#Balance #Care #Delicate

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.
-- Frank Herbert

#Demise #Mortality #Ends

The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth.
-- Frank Herbert

#Purpose #Argument #Thrive

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

#Pay #Violence #Thrive

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

#Anger #Men #Self

Many have marked the speed with which Muad'Dib learned the necessities of Arrakis. The Bene Gesserit, of course, know the basis of this speed. For the others, we can say that Muad'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. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad'Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.
-- Frank Herbert

#Believe #People #Training

Survival is the ability to swim in strange water.
-- Frank Herbert

#Water #Swim #Survival

All men seek to be enlightened. Religion is but the most ancient and honorable way in which men have striven to make sense out of God's universe. Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is the task of Religion to fit man into this lawfulness.
-- Frank Herbert

#Men #Way #Events

Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit.
-- Frank Herbert

#Law

Hope clouds observation.
-- Frank Herbert

#Clouds #Observation

We sift reality through screens composed of ideas . (And such ideas have their roots in older ideas.) Such idea systems are necessarily limited by language , by the ways we can describe them. That is to say: language cuts the grooves in which our thoughts move. If we seek new validity forms (other laws and other orders) we must step outside language.
-- Frank Herbert

#Moving #Cutting #Reality

Give as few orders as possible," his father had told him once long ago. "Once you've given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.
-- Frank Herbert

#Motivational #Inspiring #Leadership

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

#Stress #Thinking #Training

Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place.
-- Frank Herbert

#Sadness #Parting

Fear is the mind-killer.
-- Frank Herbert

#Fear #Mind #Killers

Proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you have always known.
-- Frank Herbert

#Teaching #Ease #Failing

Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.
-- Frank Herbert

#Research #Produce #Organized

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

#Believe #People #Difficult

You see, gentlemen, they have something to die for. They've discovered they're a people. They're awakening.
-- Frank Herbert

#People #Gentleman #Awakening

Kindness is the beginning of cruelty.
-- Frank Herbert

#Kindness #Cruelty

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

#Believe #Men #Doe

Education is no substitute for intelligence.
-- Frank Herbert

#Substitutes

What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises—no matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It's not for fighting.
-- Frank Herbert

#Fighting #Making Love #Matter

Whether a thought is spoken or not it is a real thing and has powers of reality.
-- Frank Herbert

#Real #Reality #Thrive

Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know.
-- Frank Herbert

#Believe #Want

The mistakes (of leaders) are amplified by the numbers who follow them without question. Charismatic leaders tend to build up followings, power structures and these power structures tend to be taken over by people who are corruptible. I don't think that the old saw about 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely' is accurate: I think power attracts the corruptible.
-- Frank Herbert

#Mistake #Taken #Thinking

What is important for a leader is that which makes him a leader. It is the needs of his people.
-- Frank Herbert

#People #Leader #Important

If there is a difference between what is said and what is done, only a fool believes what was said.
-- Frank Herbert

#Believe #Differences #Done

We tend to become like the worst in those we oppose.
-- Frank Herbert

#Enemy #Worst

And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning 'That path leads ever down into stagnation.
-- Frank Herbert

#Temptation #Path #Warning

Police are inevitably corrupted. ... Police always observe that criminals prosper. It takes a pretty dull policeman to miss the fact that the position of authority is the most prosperous criminal position available.
-- Frank Herbert

#Missing #Police #Criminals

Remember: Bureaucracy elevates conformity ... Make that elevates 'fatal stupidity' to the status of religion.
-- Frank Herbert

#Stupidity #Conformity #Remember

There has never been a truly selfless rebel, just hypocrites—conscious hypocrites or unconscious hypocrites, it’s all the same.
-- Frank Herbert

#Hypocrite #Rebel #Selfless

War is behavior with roots in the single cell of the primeval seas. Eat whatever you touch or it will eat you.
-- Frank Herbert

#War #Cells #Sea

When I need to identify rebels, I look for men with principles
-- Frank Herbert

#Men #Principles #Rebel

Those who would repeat the past must control the teaching of history.
-- Frank Herbert

#Teaching #Past #History

We have eternity, beloved." "You may have eternity. I have only now." "But this is eternity.
-- Frank Herbert

#May #Beloved #Eternity

It was mostly sweet," he whispered, "and you were the sweetest of all.
-- Frank Herbert

#Sweet #Sweetest

Much that was called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility toward life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eye of God, that knowledge without action is empty. All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you’ve always known.
-- Frank Herbert

#Life #Attitude #Teaching

Time can also be a place.... Everything depends on where you are standing, on where you look or what you hear. The measure of it is found in consciousness itself.
-- Frank Herbert

#Time #Looks #Consciousness

Time is a measure of space, just as a range-finder is a measure of space, but measuring locks us into the place we measure.
-- Frank Herbert

#Time #Space #Locks

What senses do we lack that we cannot see or hear another world all around us?
-- Frank Herbert

#World #Another World

It is not that power corrupts but that power is a magnet to the corruptible.
-- Frank Herbert

#War #Power Corrupts #Magnet

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 or she is in. That person must reflect what is projected upon him or her.
-- Frank Herbert

#Greatness #Imagination #Feelings

The highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences
-- Frank Herbert

#Understanding #Environment #Function

Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces.
-- Frank Herbert

#Civilization #Quality #Individual

Beware of the truth, gentle Sister. Although much sought after, truth can be dangerous to the seeker. Myths and reassuring lies are much easier to find and believe. If you find a truth, even a temporary one, it can demand that you make painful changes. Conceal your truths within words. Natural ambiguity will protect you then.
-- Frank Herbert

#Lying #Believe #Demand

A storm is coming; our storm. Emperor - we come for you!
-- Frank Herbert

#Atheism #Storm #Emperor

Once human beings realize something can be done, they're not satisfied until they've done it.
-- Frank Herbert

#Being Real #Done #Research

When you think to take determination of your fate into your own hands, that is the moment you can be crushed. Be cautious.
-- Frank Herbert

#Determination #Fate #Thinking

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

#Wise #Men #Tools

Grief is the price of victory.
-- Frank Herbert

#Grief #Victory #Aging

I cry for those not yet dead.
-- Frank Herbert

#Compassion #Cry

What you cannot control, you must accept.
-- Frank Herbert

#Accepting

It is not the present which unfluences the future, thou fool, but the future which forms the present. You have it all backward. Since the future is set, an unfolding of events which will assure that future is fixed and inevitable.
-- Frank Herbert

#Fool #Events #Fixed

Too much knowledge never makes for simple decisions.
-- Frank Herbert

#Simple #Decision #Too Much