The voices / 208 fragments

Frank Herbert

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Archive entries

01Undated

Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is the task of Religion to fit man into this lawfulness.

Frank Herbert / quote

02Undated

Some say," Scytale said, "that people cling to Imperial leadership because space is infinite. They feel lonely without a unifying symbol. For a lonely people, the Emperor is a definite place. They can turn toward him and say: 'See, there He is. He makes us one.' Perhaps religion serves the same purpose, m'Lord.

Frank Herbert / quote

03Undated

The Fremen have a simple, practical religion,” he said.“Nothing about religion is simple.

Frank Herbert / quote

04Undated

One learns from books and example only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things.

Frank Herbert / quote

05Undated

Proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you have always known.

Frank Herbert / quote

06Undated

Ready comprehension is often a knee-jerk response and the most dangerous form of understanding. It blinks an opaque screen over your ability to learn. Be warned. Understand nothing. All comprehension is temporary.

Frank Herbert / quote

07Undated

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.

Frank Herbert / quote

08Undated

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 / quote

09Undated

Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.

Frank Herbert / quote

10Undated

Fear is the mind-killer.

Frank Herbert / quote

11Undated

Try looking into that place where you dare not look! You'll find me there, staring out at you!

Frank Herbert / quote

12Undated

Face your fears or they will climb over your back.

Frank Herbert / quote

13Undated

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.

Frank Herbert / quote

14Undated

The man without emotions is the one to fear.

Frank Herbert / quote

15Undated

motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches.

Frank Herbert / quote

16Undated

You have a nicety of awareness of the difference between a blade's edge and its tip.

Frank Herbert / quote

17Undated

Military foolishness is ultimately suicidal. They believe that by risking death they pay the price of any violent behavior against enemies of their own choosing. They have the invader mentality, that false sense of freedom from responsibility for your own actions.

Frank Herbert / quote

18Undated

It is far better to win a battle through skilled leadership and wise decisions than violence and bloodshed. It may not seem as glorious to the uninitiated, but in the end it results in fewer wounds--of any kind.

Frank Herbert / quote

19Undated

Governments always commit their entire populations when the demands grow heavy enough. By their passive acceptance, these populations become accessories to whatever is done in their name.

Frank Herbert / quote

20Undated

Liberty and Freedom are complex concepts. They go back to religious ideas of Free Will and are related to the Ruler Mystique implicit in absolute monarchs. Without absolute monarchs patterned after the Old Gods and ruling by the grace of a belief in religious indulgence, Liberty and Freedom would never have gained their present meaning. These ideals owe their very existence to past examples of oppression. And the forces that maintain such ideas will erode unless renewed by dramatic teaching or new oppressions. This is the most basic key to my life.

Frank Herbert / quote

21Undated

Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.

Frank Herbert / quote

22Undated

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 replaced by vague ritual. -Words of Muad'dib by Princess Irulan.

Frank Herbert / quote

23Undated

Democracy is susceptible to being led astray by having scapegoats paraded in front of the electorate. Get the rich, the greedy, the criminals, the stupid leader and so on ad nauseam.

Frank Herbert / quote

24Undated

Create or arouse such unbridled forces and you built carnal fantasies of enormous complexity. You could lead whole populations around by their desires, by their fantasy projections.

Frank Herbert / quote