Authors — Quotes

Frank Herbert Quotes: 24

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.
Dune
There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.
Education is no substitute for intelligence.
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.
Dune
There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.
Dune
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.
Children of Dune
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.
Dune
Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.
The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.
Children of Dune
A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.
The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.
Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.
Dune
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.
Dune
The truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it.
God Emperor of Dune
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.
Dune Messiah
Guilt starts as a feeling of failure.
One learns from books and example only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things.
Children of Dune
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.
Dune
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.
They are not mad. They're trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.
Dune Messiah
A stone is heavy and the sand is weighty; but a fool's wrath is heavier than them both.
Dune
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.
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.
Chapterhouse: Dune
Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is the task of Religion to fit man into this lawfulness.
Dune