Frank Herbert Quotes

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

~ Frank Herbert

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

~ 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.

~ Frank Herbert

The truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it.

~ Frank Herbert

To be a god can ultimately become boring and degrading. There'd be reason enough for the invention of free will! A god might wish to escape into sleep and be alive only in the unconscious projections of his dream-creatures.

~ Frank Herbert

Irreverence is a most necessary ingredient of religion. Not to speak of its importance in philosophy. Irreverence is the only way left to us for testing our universe.

~ Frank Herbert

A stone is heavy and the sand is weighty, but a fool's wrath is heavier than them both.

~ Frank Herbert

Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.

~ Frank Herbert

My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something cannot emerge from nothing,' he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable 'the truth' can be.

~ Frank Herbert

Education is no substitute for intelligence.

~ Frank Herbert

I am not the river I am the net.

~ Frank Herbert

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

There is only one true wealth in all the universe--living time.

~ Frank Herbert

Then, as his planet killed him, it occurred to Kynes that his father and all the other scientists were wrong, that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error.

~ Frank Herbert

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

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

~ Frank Herbert

The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.

~ 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

They are not mad. They're trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.

~ Frank Herbert

Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, 'I am not the kind of person I want to be.' It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied.

~ Frank Herbert

But it's well known that repression makes a religion flourish.

~ Frank Herbert

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.

~ Frank Herbert

In 1054, the patriarch of Constantinople and the pope excommunicated each other. That was the end of holiness for both churches.

~ Frank Herbert

Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is the task of Religion to fit man into this lawfulness.

~ Frank Herbert

The Fremen have a simple, practical religion,” he said.“Nothing about religion is simple.

~ Frank Herbert

One learns from books and example only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things.

~ 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

Ready comprehension is often a knee-jerk response and the most dangerous form of understanding. It blinks an opaque screen over your ability to learn. Be warned. Understand nothing. All comprehension is temporary.

~ Frank Herbert

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

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

Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.

~ Frank Herbert

Fear is the mind-killer.

~ Frank Herbert

Try looking into that place where you dare not look! You'll find me there, staring out at you!

~ Frank Herbert

Face your fears or they will climb over your back.

~ Frank Herbert

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.

~ Frank Herbert

The man without emotions is the one to fear.

~ Frank Herbert

motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches.

~ Frank Herbert

You have a nicety of awareness of the difference between a blade's edge and its tip.

~ Frank Herbert

Military foolishness is ultimately suicidal. They believe that by risking death they pay the price of any violent behavior against enemies of their own choosing. They have the invader mentality, that false sense of freedom from responsibility for your own actions.

~ Frank Herbert

It is far better to win a battle through skilled leadership and wise decisions than violence and bloodshed. It may not seem as glorious to the uninitiated, but in the end it results in fewer wounds--of any kind.

~ Frank Herbert