Top 100 Herbert's Quotes
#1. 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
#2. 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
#3. We owed so much to Herbert's ever cheerful industry and readiness, that I often wondered how I had conceived that old idea of his inaptitude, until I was one day enlightened by the reflection, that perhaps the inaptitude had never been in him at all, but had been in me.
Charles Dickens
#4. 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
#5. I'm quite interested in adapting some of James Herbert's early work. 'The Dark' ... But I was always desperate to do an adaptation of 'War of the Worlds' until the Beard stole it from underneath my feet.
Neil Marshall
#6. 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
#7. (Dune's Frank) Herbert made religion the inescapable instrument of cultural change.
Joseph Bottum
#8. 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
#9. If you are anxious, you can't learn. It's like dropping seeds on concrete. With a quiet mind, people take things in.
Herbert Benson
#10. The Constitution is America's glue, Democracy is the Constitution's glue.
Herbert Hoover
#11. The gods do not deduct from man's allotted span the hours spent in fishing.
Herbert Hoover
#12. That is one of the Law's purposes, of course: to test the qualities of those who choose to employ it.
Frank Herbert
#13. 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
#14. If that thy fame with ev'ry toy be pos'd, 'Tis a thin web, which poysonous fancies make; But the great souldier's honour was compos'd Of thicker stuf, which would endure a shake. Wisdom picks friends; civility plays the rest; A toy shunn'd cleanly passeth with the best.
George Herbert
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. It's so much more interesting to study a ... damaged world. I find it difficult to learn anything in a place that's too civilized.
Brian Herbert
#18. Who eates the Kings Goose uoydes the feathers an hundred years after.
[Who eats the king's goose voids the feathers a hundred years after.]
George Herbert
#19. 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
#20. 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
#21. One must think until it hurts. One must worry a problem in one's mind until it seems there cannot be another aspect of it that hasn't been considered.
Roy Herbert Reinhart
#23. Let's find out what everyone is doing, And then stop everyone from doing it.
Alan Patrick Herbert
#24. Herbert Hoover once ran on the slogan, 'Two cars in every garage'. Apparently, the Republican candidate this year is running on the slogan, 'Two families in every garage'.
Harry S. Truman
#25. To the soul's desires The body listens What the flesh requires Keeps the heart imprisoned
Frank Herbert
#26. Viewed as a geometric figure, the ant's path is irregular, complex, and hard to describe.
Herbert A. Simon
#27. 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
#28. A person cries out in life because it's lonely and because life's been broken off from whatever created it. But no matter how much you hate life, you love it too. It's like a caldron boiling with everything you have to have, but very painful to the lips.
Frank Herbert
#29. All rebellions are ordinary and an ultimate bore. They are copied out of the same pattern, one much like another. The driving force is adrenalin addiction and the desire to gain personal power. All rebels are closet aristocrats. That's why I can convert them so easily. Why
Frank Herbert
#30. You always come back to Duke Ellington - he's kind of like the thread that holds everything together from the big band descending to lots of jazz, actually.
Herbert
#31. But that's the function I expect of you, cousin. It's why I chose you. I'll make it official. I will give you a new name. From this moment, you'll be called Breaking of the Habit, which in our tongue is Harq al-Ada. Come, cousin, don't be obtuse. My mother taught you well. Give me your Sardaukar.
Frank Herbert
#33. Is that the name you wish, Muad'Dib?" Stilgar asked. "I am an Atreides," Paul whispered, and then louder: "It's not right that I give up entirely the name my father gave me. Could I be known among you as Paul-Muad'Dib?" "You are Paul-Muad'Dib," Stilgar said. And
Frank Herbert
#34. We are indebted to the Book of books (Bible) for our national ideals and institution. Their preservation rests in adhering to it's precepts.
Herbert Hoover
#35. Words signify man's refusal to accept the world as it is.
Herbert Kaufman
#36. That's the best gowne that goes up and downe the house.
George Herbert
#37. Love is life's end, but never ending. Love is life's wealth, never spent, but ever spending. Love's life's reward, rewarded in rewarding.
Herbert Spencer
#38. A dwarf on a giant's shoulders sees the further of the two.
George Herbert
#39. Umman Kudu: scissors-line of jaw muscles, chin like a boot toe - a man to be trusted because the captain's vices were known.
Frank Herbert
#40. He's awake and listening to us," said the old woman. "Sly little rascal." She chuckled. "But royalty has need of slyness. And if he's really the Kwisatz Haderach ... well ... .
Frank Herbert
#42. Every man's censure is first moulded in his own nature.
George Herbert
#43. Each of us comes into being knowing who he is and what he is supposed to do.' ... 'Small children know,' Leto said. 'It's only after adults have confused them that children hide this knowledge even from themselves.
Frank Herbert
#44. The Sundaies of man's life, Thredded together on time's string, Make bracelets to adorn the wife Of the eternal, glorious King. On Sunday heaven's gates stand ope; Blessings are plentiful and rife. More plentiful than hope.
George Herbert
#46. Hee that's fed at anothers hand may stay long ere he be full.
George Herbert
#47. Only gods can safely risk perfection ... it's a dangerous thing for a man.
Frank Herbert
#48. A Dwarfe on a Gyants shoulder sees further of the two. [A dwarf on a giant's shoulder sees farther of the two.
George Herbert
#49. Knowing where the trap is
that's the first step in evading it.
Frank Herbert
#50. Life improves the closed system's capacity to sustain life. Life - all life - is in the service of life.
Frank Herbert
#51. A good ruler has to learn his world's language, and that's different for every world, the language you don't hear just with your ears.
Frank Herbert
#52. Herbert Asquith's clarity is a great liability because he has nothing to say.
Arthur Balfour
#53. There was a man so wise,
He jumped into
A sandy place
And burnt out both his eyes!
And when he knew his eyes were gone,
He offered no complaint.
He summoned up a vision
And made himself a saint.
-Children's Verse
from History of Muad'dib
Frank Herbert
#54. This world has emptied me of all but the oldest purpose: tomorrow's life. I live now for my young Duke and the daughter yet to be. She
Frank Herbert
#55. Often people try and just consider music as music, in a musical context. People seem to forget that music is not just audio material - it's also the artwork, the packaging it comes in.
Herbert
#56. [Humbaba's] sound is like a flood's sound
Slowly forming in the distance,
Then enveloping all other sounds
Herbert Mason
#58. Lusts are like agues; the fit is not always on, and yet the man is not rid of his disease; and some men's lusts, like some agues, have not such quick returns as others.
Herbert Spencer
#59. It's very difficult convincing the young of anything. They're born knowing so much.
Frank Herbert
#60. There's an unwritten compact between you and the reader. If someone enters a bookstore and sets down hard earned money (energy) for your book, you owe that person some entertainment and as much more as you can give.
Frank Herbert
#61. You see, Count, I have the Emperor's prison planet, Salusa Secundus, to inspire me. The
Frank Herbert
#62. Brave men don't fight for nothing, like children.' protested Howell's (Major Joe Howell) friend. 'We want to know what we are fighting about. If we are wrong we may apologize.
Herbert Asbury
#63. A man's liberties are none the less aggressed upon because those who coerce him do so in the belief that he will be benefited.
Herbert Spencer
#64. There's something called the physiology of forgiveness. Being unable to forgive other people's faults is harmful to one's health.
Herbert Benson
#65. The Fremen! They're paying the Guild for privacy, paying in a coin that's freely available to anyone with desert power - spice.
Frank Herbert
#66. I come only to ask a simple question. Is Muad'Dib's death to be followed by the moral suicide of all men? Is that the inevitable aftermath of a Messiah?
Frank Herbert
#67. Myths are not fiction, but history seen with a poet's eyes and recounted in a poet's terms.
Frank Herbert
#68. I'll keep writing 'Dune' books as long as my mother's spirit continues to support the project.
Brian Herbert
#69. When my house burnes, it's not good playing at Chesse.
George Herbert
#70. He that's foolish in the fault, let him be wise in the punishment.
George Herbert
#71. Unfortunately most criticism is by poseurs. They use their comments about someone else's work as a platform on which to strike poses. What they're really saying is: "Look at me! Look at me!"
Frank Herbert
#72. But that's life right? It's just a shitty hand of cards. But then maybe somebody pulls out an Ace, and somebody else gets a four, or a ten. It's all in the draw and how you play it.
Mackenzie Herbert
#74. People aren't concerned with love; it's too disordered. They prefer despotism. Too much freedom breeds chaos. We can't have that, can we? And how do you make despotism lovable?
Frank Herbert
#75. Bees work for man, and yet they never bruise
Their Master's flower, but leave it having done,
As fair as ever and as fit to use;
So both the flower doth stay and honey run.
George Herbert
#76. Everyone in the class turned. On one of the tables, a frog had started to smoke, and the limbs were twitching spasmodically. Dr. Herbert rushed over, clapping his hands. "It's alive!" he cried.
Daryl Gregory
#77. No philosopher's stone of a constitution can produce golden conduct from leaden instincts.
Herbert Spencer
#78. And if he's the sun finally on your horizon, I'm naming my first boy after him. Which, admittedly, is not a hardship since his name is badass and not Herbert. But, still.
Kristen Ashley
#79. In Jefferson's mind democracy was tantamount to extreme individualism.
Herbert Croly
#80. A duke's son MUST know about poisons. It's the way of our times.
Frank Herbert
#81. I observed you in pain, lad. Pain's merely the axis of the test. Your mother's told you about our ways of observing. I see the signs of her teaching in you. Our test is crisis and observation.
Frank Herbert
#82. Spectacles are deaths Harquebuze.
[Spectacles are death's arquebuse.]
George Herbert
#83. The "cumulative effects" of unbridled commercialism, however difficult to assess, constitute one key to the impact of growing up in the core of the world's marketing system. Minimally, it suggests unpreparedness for, and lack of interest in, the world that exists outside the shopping mall.
Herbert Schiller
#84. Malign? I praise him. Death and deceit are our only hopes now. I just do not fool myself about Thufir's methods.
Frank Herbert
#85. You have to appreciate life before you want to preserve it," she said.
"And it's the survivors who maintain the most light and poignant hold upon the beauties of living. Women know this more often than men because birth is the reflection of death.
Frank Herbert
#87. When you take comprehensive, then we're dealing with certain issues like full citizenship ... And whatever else we disagree on, I think we would agree on that that's a more toxic and contentious issue, granting full amnesty.
Herbert Spencer
#88. Divide and rule, subdivide and rule even more powerfully, fragment and rule absolutely." "That's
Frank Herbert
#89. There is no fate that plans men's lives. Whatever comes to us, good or bad, is usually the result of our own action or lack of action.
Herbert Newton Casson
#90. A stone is heavy and the sand is weighty; but a fool's wrath is heavier than them both.
Frank Herbert
#91. People want order, this kind or some other. They sit in the prison of their hungers and see that war has become the sport of the rich. That's a dangerous form of sophistication. It's disorderly.
Frank Herbert
#92. Resort to sermons, but to prayers most: Praying's the end of preaching.
George Herbert
#93. Giving much to the poore, doth inrich a mans store.
[Giving much to the poor doth increase a man's store.]
George Herbert
#94. But it's well known that repression makes a religion flourish.
Frank Herbert
#95. The chicken is the country's, but the city eats it.
George Herbert
#96. 'It's this accursed Science,' I cried. 'It's the very Devil. The mediaeval priests and persecutors were right, and the Moderns are all wrong. You tamper with it-and it offers you gifts. And directly you take them it knocks you to pieces in some unexpected way.'
George Herbert
#97. I'm the only person of distinction who's ever had a depression named after him.
Herbert Hoover
#98. Let's stop somebody from doing something! Everybody does too much.
A.P. Herbert
#99. Bureaucracy is ever desirous of spreading its influence and its power. You cannot extend the mastery of the government over the daily working life of a people without at the same time
making it the master of the people's souls and thoughts.
Herbert Hoover
#100. Whoever considers the study of anatomy, I believe will never be an atheist; the frame of man's body, and coherence of his parts, being so strange and paradoxical, that I hold it to be the greatest miracle of nature.
Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert Of Cherbury
