Frank Herbert Quotes

246 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

Frank Herbert
Control the coinage and the courts — let the rabble have the rest.

Frank Herbert
Most of us choose our companions and surroundings to reflect ourselves.

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

Frank Herbert
The writing of history is largely a process of diversion. Most historical accounts distract attention from the secret influences behind great events.

Frank Herbert
Law always chooses sides on the basis of enforcement power. Morality and legal niceties have little to do with it when the real question is: Who has the clout?

Frank Herbert
What greater gift is there than to demonstrate you need not fear death?

Frank Herbert
When you think you know something: that is a most perfect barrier against learning.

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

Frank Herbert
To endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe. You cannot hire a wise man or any other intellect to solve it for you. There's no writ of inquest or calling of witness to provide answers.

Frank Herbert
Words can carry any burden we wish. All that's required is agreement and a tradition upon which to build.

Frank Herbert
Can you collect chaos? Not collecting, that is the ultimate gathering. What can you gather without gathering yourself.

Frank Herbert
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.

Frank Herbert
Justice required resort to law and that could be a fickle mistress, subject always to the whims and prejudices of those who administered the laws.

Frank Herbert
Order generally was a product of human activity. Chaos existed as a raw material from which to create order.

Frank Herbert
Religion, too, is a weapon. What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government?

Frank Herbert
There's an unwritten compact between you and the reader. If someone enters a bookstore and sets down hard earned money (energy) for your book, you owe that person some entertainment and as much more as you can give.

Frank Herbert
The young reed dies so easily. Beginnings are times of great peril.

Frank Herbert
One must cast off old agonies as a snake casts off its skin--only to grow a new set and accept all of their limitations.

Frank Herbert
Prisons are needed only to provide the illusion that courts and police are effective. They're a kind of job insurance.

Frank Herbert
What are you, child, that you need time to learn about yourself?

Frank Herbert
Unused power was like a marionette with visible strings, nobody holding them. A compelling attraction: I could make it dance.

Frank Herbert
Dangers lurk in all systems. Systems incorporate the unexamined beliefs of their creators. Adopt a system, accept its beliefs, and you help strengthen the resistance to change

Frank Herbert
There exists no separation between gods and men; one blends softly casual into the other.

Frank Herbert
The mind goes on working no matter how we try to hold it back.

Frank Herbert
Education is no substitute for intelligence. That elusive quality is defined only in part by puzzle-solving ability. It is in the creation of new puzzles reflecting what your senses report that you round out the definitions.

Frank Herbert
When a creature has developed into one thing, he will choose death rather than change into his opposite.

Frank Herbert