Frank Herbert Quotes

246 Sourced Quotes

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

Frank Herbert
No matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no matter the developments of life and society nor the complexity of the machine/human interface, there always come interludes of lonely power when the course of humankind, the very future of humankind, depends upon the relatively simple actions of single individual.

Frank Herbert
Democracy is susceptible to being led astray by having scapegoats paraded in front of the electorate.

Frank Herbert
We never get far from wealth and all of its masks when we deal with power.

Frank Herbert
There exists a limit to the force even the most powerful may apply without destroying themselves. Judging this limit is the true artistry of government. Misuse of power is the fatal sin.

Frank Herbert
Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless nit-picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma.

Frank Herbert
Ask what Infinity might produce and the only answer possible was, "Anything." Any good, any evil; any god, any devil.

Frank Herbert
There are limits to power, as those who put their hopes in a constitution always discover.

Frank Herbert
Life cannot find reasons to sustain it, cannot be a source of decent natural regard, unless each of us resolves to breathe such qualities into it.

Frank Herbert
Anything less than abject submission has to have some attack in it.

Frank Herbert
The person who takes the banal and ordinary and illuminates it in a new way can terrify. We do not want our ideas changed.

Frank Herbert
Answers are a perilous grip on the universe. They can appear sensible yet explain nothing.

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

Frank Herbert
Radicals are only to be feared when you try to suppress them. You must demonstrate that you will use the best of what they offer.

Frank Herbert
Justice? Who asks for justice? We make our own justice... Let us not rail about justice as long as we have arms and the freedom to use them.

Frank Herbert
Give me the judgment of balanced minds in preference to laws every time. Codes and manuals create patterned behavior. All patterned behavior tends to go unquestioned, gathering destructive momentum.

Frank Herbert
The oppressed always learned from and copied the oppressor. When the tables were turned, the stage was set for another round of revenge and violence -- roles reversed. And reversed and reversed ad nauseam.

Frank Herbert
Life - all life - is in the service of life. Necessary nutrients are made available to life by life in greater and greater richness as the diversity of life increases. The entire landscape comes alive, filled with relationships and relationships within relationships.

Frank Herbert
There are problems in this universe for which there are no answers. Nothing. Nothing can be done.

Frank Herbert
No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero.

Frank Herbert
I'm going to rub your faces in things you try to avoid. I don't find it strange that all you want to believe is only that which comforts you. How else do humans invent the traps which betray us into mediocrity? How else do we define cowardice?

Frank Herbert
The basic lesson of our relativistic universe is that things change. Any power must always meet a greater power.

Frank Herbert
You know it's love when you want to give joy and damn the consequences.

Frank Herbert
Every civilization must contend with an unconscious force which can block, betray, or countermand almost any conscious intention of the collectivity.

Frank Herbert
Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity.

Frank Herbert
Historians exercise great power and some of them know it. They recreate the past, changing it to fit their own interpretations. Thus, they change the future as well.

Frank Herbert
The whole universe sat there, open to the man who could make the right
decisions.

Frank Herbert
Small souls who seek power over others first destroy the faith those others might have in themselves.

Frank Herbert
It must certainly be more dangerous to live in ignorance than to live with knowledge.

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 or she is in. That person must reflect what is projected upon him or her.

Frank Herbert