The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand. - 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
Whether a thought is spoken or not, it is a real thing and has powers of reality. - 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
Life isn't a problem to be solved. But a reality to be experienced. - Frank Herbert
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. - Frank Herbert
Truth is subject to too much analysis. - Frank Herbert
There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man--with human flesh. - Frank Herbert
Guilt starts as a feeling of failure. - Frank Herbert
Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place. - Frank Herbert
Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible. - Frank Herbert
Dune was a world of paradox now—a world under siege, yet the center of power. To come under siege, he decided, was the inevitable fate of power. - Frank Herbert
There is only one true wealth in all the universe--living time. - Frank Herbert
Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. ...The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive. - Frank Herbert
Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic. - Frank Herbert
Humans live best when each has his place, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things. Destroy the place and destroy the person. - Frank Herbert
Absolute power is the power to destroy. - Frank Herbert
A human being can stand any amount of pain. - Frank Herbert
Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous. - Frank Herbert
I remember friends from wars all but we forgot. All of them distilled into each wound we caught. Those wounds are all painful places where we fought. Battles never left behind, ones we never sought. What is it that we spent and what was it we bought? - Frank Herbert
Blood is thicker than water, but politics are thicker than blood. - Frank Herbert
It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future. - Frank Herbert
We can say that Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. - Frank Herbert
The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action. - Frank Herbert
There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story. - Frank Herbert
If wishes were fishes, then we would all cast nets. - Frank Herbert
The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door.' And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning, 'That path leads ever down into stagnation. - Frank Herbert
There are many degrees of sight and many degrees of blindness. What senses do we lack that we cannot see another world all around us? - Frank Herbert
motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches. - 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 corruptable. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted. - Frank Herbert
The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it. - Frank Herbert
There is no escape - we pay for the violence of our ancestors. - Frank Herbert
Beaurocracy destroys initiative. - Frank Herbert
The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future. - Frank Herbert
The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience. - Frank Herbert
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires, seek discipline and find your liberty. - Frank Herbert
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? - Frank Herbert
Probablemente no haya en nuestra vida un instante más terrible que aquel en que uno descubre que su padre es un hombre... hecho de carne humana. - 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
Humans live best when each has a place to stand, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things and what he may achieve. Destroy the place and you destroy the person. - Frank Herbert
All governments eventually lean further and further towards aristocracy. - Frank Herbert
You can not go on forever stealing what you need without regard to those who come after. - Frank Herbert
the meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture - it begins in the dignity with which we treat the dead - Frank Herbert
Every civilization depends on the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness-- they cannot work and their civilization collapses - Frank Herbert
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. - Frank Herbert
Peace for any prolonged period of time is impossible. Humans have a natural thirst for chaos and war is the most readily available form of chaos. - Frank Herbert
Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaces by vague ritual. - Frank Herbert
The one-eyed view of our universe says you must not look far afield for problems. Such problems may never arrive. Instead tend to the wolf within your fences. The packs ranging outside may not even exist. - Frank Herbert
Education is no substitute for intelligence. - 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