“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
“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
“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
“The mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”
― Frank Herbert
“Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.”
― Frank Herbert
“What do you despise? By this are you truly known.”
― Frank Herbert
“Education is no substitute for intelligence.”
― Frank Herbert
“There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.”
― Frank Herbert
“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
“Hope clouds observation.”
― 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
“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
“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
“He who controls the spice controls the universe.”
― Frank
“Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.”
― Frank Herbert
“The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.”
― Frank Herbert
“Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.”
― Frank Herbert
“Truth suffers from too much analysis.
-Ancient Fremen Saying”
― Frank Herbert
“It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.”
― Frank Herbert
“Fear is the mind-killer.”
― Frank Herbert
“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
“If wishes were fishes, we’d all cast nets.”
― 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
“Do actions agree with words? There’s your measure of reliability. Never confine yourself to the words.”
― Frank Herbert
“The people who can destroy a thing, they control it.”
― Frank Herbert
“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
“Nature does not make mistakes. Right and wrong are human categories.”
― Frank Herbert
“Survival is the ability to swim in strange water.”
― Frank Herbert
“The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.”
― Frank Herbert
“Try looking into that place where you dare not look! You’ll find me there, staring out at you!”
― Frank Herbert
“Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife – chopping off what’s incomplete and saying: ‘Now, it’s complete because it’s ended here.’
– from “Collected Sayings of Maud’Dib” by the Princess Irulan”
― Frank Herbert
“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
“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.”
― Frank Herbert
“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
“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
“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
“Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect any who seek it.”
― Frank Herbert
“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
“Grave this on your memory, lad: A world is supported by four things…” she held up four big-knuckled fingers. “…the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these things are as nothing…” She closed her fingers into a fist. “…without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!”
― Frank Herbert
“The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.”
― Frank Herbert
“Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.”
― Frank Herbert
“The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth.”
― Frank Herbert
“The child who refuses to travel in the father’s harness, this is the symbol of man’s most unique capability. “I do not have to be what my father was. I do not have to obey my father’s rules or even believe everything he believed. It is my strength as a human that I can make my own choices of what to believe and what not to believe, of what to be and what not to be.”
― Frank Herbert
“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
“Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it’s a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.”
― Frank Herbert
“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
“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.
-Words of Muad’dib by Princess Irulan.”
― Frank Herbert