Top 433 Quotes & Sayings by Frank Herbert

Kindness is the beginning of cruelty.

The proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On that path lies danger.

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.

Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.

Truth suffers from too much analysis.

If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.

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

The stakes in conflict do not change. Battle determines who will control the wealth or its equivalent.

Respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality.

Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?

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.

When law and duty are one, united by religion, you never become fully conscious, fully aware of yourself. You are always a little less than an individual.

Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.

The difference between sentiment and being sentimental is the following: Sentiment is when a driver swerves out of the way to avoid hitting a rabbit on the road. Being sentimental is when the same driver, when swerving away from the rabbit, hits a pedestrian.

What do you despise? By this are you truly known.

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

It is a wise man that does know the contented man is never poor, whilst the discontented man is never rich.

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.

One of the best things to come out of the home computer revolution could be the general and widespread understanding of how severely limited logic really is.

Something cannot emerge from nothing.

The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.

Religion often partakes of the myth of progress that shields us from the terrors of an uncertain future.

Wealth is a tool of freedom, but the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.

He who can destroy a thing, can control a thing.

To attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing the Darkness. It cannot be.

Enemies make you stronger, allies make you weaker.

How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him.

When politics and religion are intermingled, a people is suffused with a sense of invulnerability, and gathering speed in their forward charge, they fail to see the cliff ahead of them

Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept?

The best contribution one can make to humanity is to improve oneself.

The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it.

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.

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.

Atrocity is recognized as such by victim and predator alike, by all who learn about it at whatever remove. Atrocity has no excuses, no mitigating argument. Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. It is self-perpetuating upon itself - a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred.

If all those around you believe some particular thing, you will soon be tempted to share in that belief.

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

Silence is often the best thing to say.

Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.

Only gods can safely risk perfection ... it's a dangerous thing for a man.

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.

The mistakes (of leaders) are amplified by the numbers who follow them without question. Charismatic leaders tend to build up followings, power structures and these power structures tend to be taken over by people who are corruptible. I don't think that the old saw about 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely' is accurate: I think power attracts the corruptible.

Words are such gross machinery, so primitive and ambiguous.

The clear and safe path leads evermore into stagnation

Politics: the art of appearing candid and completely open while concealing as much as possible.

No matter how much we ask after the truth, self-awareness is often unpleasant. We do not feel kindly toward the Truthsayer.

Good governance never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders.

If you want immortality, then deny form. Whatever has form has mortality. Beyond form is the formless, the immortal.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's execution that counts.

Beware! The mind of the believer stagnates. It fails to grow outward into an unlimited, infinite universe.

Education is no substitute for intelligence.

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities.

When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.

The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.

Most believe that a satisfactory future requires a return to an idealized past, a past which never in fact existed.

There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.

Providence and Manifest Destiny are synonyms often invoked to support arguments based on wishful thinking.

A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating.

The undeserving maintain power by promoting hysteria.

The greatest and most important problems of life cannot be solved. They can only be outgrown.

The surest way to keep a secret is to make people believe they already know the answer.