Frank Herbert Quotes

“A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.”

“Unseat Rabban, the Harkonnen beast, and remake our world into a place where we may raise our families on happiness amidst an abundance of water,-- is this our goal?”

“The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows—a wall against the wind. This is the willow’s purpose.”

“Growth is limited by that necessity which is present in the least amount. And, naturally, the least favorable condition controls the growth rate.”

“Terror threatened to overwhelm her. She fought it the only way she knew: “I shall not fear. Fear is the mind killer . . . ”

“Sir, I honor and respect the personal dignity of any man who respects my dignity. I am indeed indebted to you. And I always pay my debts. If it is your custom that this knife remain sheathed here, then it is so ordered—by me. And if there is any other way we may honor the man who died in our service, you have but to name it.”

“Halleck turned away to hide his emotions. Something burned in his eyes. There was pain in him -- like a blister, all that was left of some lost yesterday that Time had pruned off him. ”

“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.”

“He felt an offense against what his mother called his instinct for rightness. It wasn’t that Reverend Mother lied to him. She obviously believed what she said. It was something deeper, something tied to his terrible purpose.”

“Intelligence takes chance with limited data in an arena where mistakes are not only possible but also necessary.”

″[Paul] recalled another thing the [Reverend Mother] had said about a world being the sum of many things—the people, the dirt, the growing things, the moons, the tides, the suns—the unknown sum called nature, a vague summation without any sense of the now.”

“Not the blood, sir. But all of a man’s water, ultimately, belongs to his people—to his tribe. It’s a necessity when you live near the Great Flat. All water’s precious there, and the human body is composed of some seventy percent water by weight. A dead man, surely, no longer requires that water”

“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.”

“The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.”

“Anything outside yourself, this you can see and apply your logic to it. But it’s a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, these things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. We tend to flounder around, blaming everything but the actual, deep-seated thing that’s really chewing on us.”

“The mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”

“For the first time, Paul allowed himself to think about the real possibility of defeat—not thinking about it out of fear or because of warnings such as that of the old Reverend Mother, but facing up to it because of his own assessment of the situation.”

“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 action had taken, also, a knowledge of personal power. Water was, indeed, power here.”

“It’s a rule of ecology,” Kynes said, “that the young Master appears to understand quite well. The struggle between life elements is the struggle for the free energy of a system. Blood’s an efficient energy source.”

“Most civilization is based on cowardice. It’s so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame.”

“This wise man observed that wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.”

“Enemies strengthen you. Allies weaken.”

“Most men go through a lifetime unchallenged, except at the final moment.”

“Leto had found his accusation irritating, like a grain of sand in an eye. He held onto the remnants of his once-human self with a grimness which could not be denied, although irritation was the closest he could come to anger.”

“The truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it.”

“It is difficult to live in the present, pointless to live in the future and impossible to live in the past.”

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

“When I need to identify rebels, I look for men with principles.”

″‘For what do you hunger, Lord?’ Moneo ventured. ‘For a humankind which can make truly long-term decisions. Do you know the key to that ability, Moneo?’ ‘You have said it many times, Lord. It is the ability to change your mind.‘”