Top 100 Frank Herbert Quotes
#1. (Dune's Frank) Herbert made religion the inescapable instrument of cultural change.
Joseph Bottum
#2. If I could go back in time and tell my younger self that eventually that I'd become very successful writing Dune books after Frank Herbert's death, I would have laughed myself silly, I think, at how strange that prospect would be.
Kevin J. Anderson
#3. Frank Herbert said that Fear is the mind-killer. He was a wise man.
Kevin Hearne
#4. Dune Messiah is the most misunderstood of Frank Herbert's novels. The reasons for this are as fascinating and complex as the renowned author himself.
Brian Herbert
#5. To quote from another gospel, DUNE by Frank Herbert, 'Fear is the mind-killer.' ... Jesus was the original Muad'dib.
Stephen Colbert
#7. As a child I read all kinds of stuff, whether it was 'Asterix and Obelix' and 'Tin Tin' comic books, or 'Lord of the Rings,' or Frank Herbert's sci-fi. Or 'The Wind in the Willows.' Or 'Charlotte's Web.'
Mohsin Hamid
#8. In Dune and Dune Messiah, he [Frank Herbert] was cautioning against pride and overconfidence, that form of narcissism described in Greek tragedies that invariably led to the great fall.
Brian Herbert
#9. A requirement of creativity is that it contributes to change. Creativity keeps the creator alive. - FRANK HERBERT, unpublished notes
Brian Herbert
#10. You've heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap. there's an animal kind of trick. a human would remain in the trap endure the pain feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind.
Frank Herbert
#11. Your own emperor bestowed Arrakis on House Atreides. I am House Atreides. The
Frank Herbert
#12. Is to attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing Darkness. It cannot be.
Frank Herbert
#13. Wealth is a tool of freedom, but the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.
Frank Herbert
#14. To use raw power is to make yourself infinitely vulnerable to greater powers.
Frank Herbert
#16. Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is the task of Religion to fit man into this lawfulness.
Frank Herbert
#17. 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
#18. Sad? Nonsense! Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place." He glanced at the charts on the table. "And Arrakis is just another place.
Frank Herbert
#19. All governments needed to remain under suspicion during their time of power including that of the Sisterhood itself. Trust no government! Not even mine!
Frank Herbert
#20. Ah! Indeed but! But he consumes too much spice, eats it like candy. Look at his eyes! He might have come directly from the Arrakeen labor pool. Efficient, Piter, but he's still emotional and prone to passionate outbursts. Efficient, Piter, but he still can err.
-Baron Vladimir
Frank Herbert
#22. We bribe the Guild with a monstrous payment in spice to keep our skies clear of satellites and such that none may spy what we do to the face of Arrakis. She
Frank Herbert
#23. To stay awake all night adds a day to your life.
Frank Herbert
#24. Power tends to isolate those who hold too much of it. Eventually, they lose touch with reality ... and fall.
Frank Herbert
#25. A storm is coming; our storm. Emperor - we come for you!
Frank Herbert
#27. Laws tend to be temporary over the long haul, Moneo. There is no such thing as rule-governed creativity.
Frank Herbert
#28. Gods need take no responsibility for anything except genesis. Gods accept everything and thus accept nothing. Gods must be identifiable yet remain anonymous. Gods do not need a spirit world.
Frank Herbert
#30. Isn't it odd how we misunderstand the hidden unity of kindness and cruelty? Jessica
Frank Herbert
#31. Our supremacy on Caladan," the Duke said, "depended on sea and air power. Here, we must develop something I choose to call desert power. This
Frank Herbert
#32. Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity.
Frank Herbert
#33. In my estimation, more misery has been created by reformers than by any other force in human history.
Frank Herbert
#35. This is the perspective which you create with your own belief, and beliefs can be manipulated by imagination. You've learned only a limited way of looking at the universe. Now you must make the universe your own creation.
Frank Herbert
#36. That is one of the Law's purposes, of course: to test the qualities of those who choose to employ it.
Frank Herbert
#37. The Baron could see the path ahead of him. One day, a Harkonnen would be Emperor. Not himself, and no spawn of his loins. But a Harkonnen. Not this Rabban he'd summoned, of course. But
Frank Herbert
#38. Thinking you knew something was a sure way to blind yourself. It was not growing up that slowly applied brakes to learning (Mentats were taught) but an accumulation of "things I know." New
Frank Herbert
#39. Surely not a palm lock, she told herself. A palm lock must be keyed to one individual's hand shape and palm lines. But it looked like a palm lock. And there were ways to open any palm lock - as she had learned at school.
Frank Herbert
#40. Humans live best when each has his own place, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things. Destroy the place and destroy the person.
Frank Herbert
#42. Whether a thought is spoken or not it is a real thing and it has power," Tuek said. "You might find the line between life and death among the Fremen to be too sharp and quick.
Frank Herbert
#43. A popular man arouses the jealousy of the powerful.
Frank Herbert
#44. Privilege becomes arrogance. Arrogance promotes injustice. The seeds of ruin blossom.
Frank Herbert
#46. I see us giving love to each other in a time of quiet between storms. It's what we were meant to do.
Frank Herbert
#47. If you believe certain words, you believe their hidden arguments. When you believe something is right or wrong, true or false, you believe the assumptions in the words which express the arguments. Such assumptions are often full of holes, but remain most precious to the convinced.
Frank Herbert
#48. No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero
Frank Herbert
#49. Politics: the art of appearing candid and completely open while concealing as much as possible.
Frank Herbert
#50. Religious institutions perpetuate a moral master-servant relationship. They create an arena which attracts prideful human power-seekers with all of their nearsighted prejudices!
Frank Herbert
#51. It was a BuSab axiom that all power blocs tended toward aristocratic forms, that the descendants of decision makers dominated the power niches.
Frank Herbert
#52. But let us not rail about justice as long as we have arms and the freedom to use them.
Frank Herbert
#53. When God hath ordained a creature to die in a particular place, He causeth that creature's wants to direct him to that place.
Frank Herbert
#55. Muad'dib rules everywhere," he said.
"Arrakis is not my destination," she insisted.
"Arrakis is the destination of everyone," he said.
Frank Herbert
#56. It must certainly be more dangerous to live in ignorance than to live with knowledge.
Frank Herbert
#57. Clinging to any form of conservatism can be dangerous. Become too conservative and you are unprepared for surprises. You cannot depend on luck. Logic is blind and often knows only its own past. Logic is good for playing chess but is often too slow for the needs of survival.
Frank Herbert
#58. The oppressed always learned from and copied the oppressor. When the tables were turned, the stage was set for another round of revenge and violence
roles reversed. And reversed and reversed ad nauseam.
Frank Herbert
#59. There was pain in him - like a blister, all that was left of some lost yesterday that Time had pruned off him.
Frank Herbert
#60. What senses do we lack that we cannot see or hear another world all around us?
Frank Herbert
#61. All around the Lady Jessica - piled in corners of the Arrakeen great hall, mounded in the open spaces - stood the packaged freight of their lives: boxes, trunks, cartons, cases - some partly unpacked.
Frank Herbert
#62. The Duke said: "Paul, I'm doing a hateful thing, but I must." He stood beside the portable poison snooper that had been brought into the conference room for their breakfast. The thing's sensor arms hung limply over the table, reminding Paul of some weird insect newly dead. The Duke's
Frank Herbert
#63. He felt the inability to grieve as a terrible flaw.
Frank Herbert
#65. There's no such thing as equal justice anywhere. It's unsettling to a society when you try to achieve such a false balance.
Frank Herbert
#66. Who asks for justice? We make our own justice.
Frank Herbert
#67. I will await below," Stilgar said, "while Idaho makes farewell with his friends. Turok was the name of our dead friend. Remember that when it comes time to release his spirit. You are friends of Turok.
Frank Herbert
#68. He thought: Jessica, mother of Muad'Dib and grandmother of these royal twins, returns to our planet today. Why does she end her self-imposed exile at this time? Why does she leave the softness and security of Caladan for the dangers of Arrakis?
Frank Herbert
#69. If we deny emotion, we lose all touch with our internal universe.
Frank Herbert
#70. Ah, Hah! But you see, Baron, I know as a Mentat when you will send the executioner. You will hold back just so long as I am useful. To move sooner would be wasteful and I'm yet of much use. I know what it is you learned from that lovely Dune planet - waste not? True, Baron?
-Piter De Vries
Frank Herbert
#72. ... one doesn't need telepathy to read your intentions.
Frank Herbert
#73. Our civilization could well die of indifference within it before succumbing to external attack. The
Frank Herbert
#74. Truth suffers from too much analysis.
-Ancient Fremen Saying
Frank Herbert
#75. 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
#76. A leader tries to perpetuate the conditions which demand his leadership. Thus, the leader requires the outsider.
Frank Herbert
#77. He maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals, and a people reverts to a mob." His
Frank Herbert
#78. Life produces a different taste each time you take it.
Frank Herbert
#79. Love is not a mood, but a dynamic way of being.
Frank Herbert
#80. Communal/managed economics have always been more destructive of their societies than those driven by greed
Frank Herbert
#81. Sometimes I wonder about Piter," the Baron said. "I cause pain out of necessity, but he ... I swear he takes a positive delight in it."
-Baron Vladimir
Frank Herbert
#82. If we define Futurism as an exploration beyond accepted limits, then the nature of limiting systems becomes the first object of exploration.
Frank Herbert
#83. peace encourages aggressions, thus igniting war.
Frank Herbert
#84. I have another kind of sight. I see another kind of terrain: the available paths. The
Frank Herbert
#85. The body, learning a thing is good for it, interprets the flavor as pleasurable - slightly euphoric. And, like life, never to be truly synthesized.
Frank Herbert
#86. Humans have a tendency to complain whenever the old must give way to the new. But change is the natural way of the universe, and we must learn to embrace it rather than fear it. The very process of transformation and adaptation strengthens the species.
Frank Herbert
#87. To the soul's desires The body listens What the flesh requires Keeps the heart imprisoned
Frank Herbert
#88. Always prepare secondary ways of dealing with problems.
Frank Herbert
#89. Respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality.
Frank Herbert
#90. Humans are born with a susceptibility to that most persistent and debilitating disease of intellect: self-deception. The best of all possible worlds and the worst get their dramatic coloration from it. As nearly as we can determine, there is no natural immunity. Constant alertness is required.
Frank Herbert
#91. When I need to identify rebels, I look for men with principles
Frank Herbert
#92. And loyalty is a valued commodity. It can be sold ... not bought, but sold.
Frank Herbert
#93. We don't need any more Atreides gods! We need a space for some humanity!
Frank Herbert
#94. The Harkonnens discouraged investigation of the spice, didn't they?
Frank Herbert
#95. Black is a blind remembering, she thought. You listen for pack sounds, for the cries of those who hunted your ancestors in a past so ancient only your most primitive cells remember. The ears see. The nostrils see.
Frank Herbert
#96. Machine makers always run the risk of becoming totally machine.
Frank Herbert
#97. Nothing wins more loyalty for a leader than an air of bravura," the Duke said. "I, therefore, cultivate an air of bravura.
Frank Herbert
#98. Is your religion real when it costs you nothing and carries no risk? Is your religion real when you fatten upon it? Is your religion real when you commit atrocities in its name?
Frank Herbert
#99. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write.
Frank Herbert
#100. Every religious, business and governmental question has the single derivative: 'Who will exercise the power?' Alliances, combines, complexes, they all chase mirages unless they go for the power. All else is nonsense, as most thinking beings come to realize.
Frank Herbert
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