01UndatedDon't give over all of your critical faculties to people in power, no matter how admirable those people may appear to be. Beneath the hero's facade you will find a human being who makes human mistakes. Enormous problems arise when human mistakes are made on the grand scale available to a superhero. And sometimes you run into another problem. It is demonstrable that power structures tend to attract people who want power for the sake of power and that a significant proportion of such people are imbalanced — in a word, insane.Frank Herbert / quote ↗
02UndatedDeep 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 / quote ↗
03UndatedI realize that humans cannot bear very much reality. Most lives are a flight from selfhood. Most prefer the truths of the stable. You stick your heads into the stanchions and munch contentedly until you die. Others use you for their purposes. Not once do you live outside the stable to lift your head and be your own creature. Muad'Dib came to tell you about that. Without understanding his message, you cannot revere him!Frank Herbert / quote ↗
04UndatedA ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel... he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men... a good ruler has to learn his world's language... it's different for every world... the language of the rocks and growing things... the language you don't hear just with your ears... the Mystery of Life... not a problem to solve, but a reality to experience... Understanding must move with the flow of the process.Frank Herbert / quote ↗
05UndatedThe child who refuses to travel in the father's harness, this is the symbol of man's most unique capability. "I do not have to be what my father was. I do not have to obey my father's rules or even believe everything he believed. It is my strength as a human that I can make my own choices of what to believe and what not to believe, of what to be and what not to be.Frank Herbert / quote ↗
06UndatedEach of us comes into being knowing who he is and what he is supposed to do.' ... 'Small children know,' Leto said. 'It's only after adults have confused them that children hide this knowledge even from themselves.Frank Herbert / quote ↗
07UndatedWe had something few experience. We were joined in our strengths rather than in our weaknesses.Frank Herbert / quote ↗
08UndatedThe people who demand that the oracle predict for them really want to know next year’s price on whalefur or something equally mundane. None of them wants an instant-by-instant prediction of his personal life.Frank Herbert / quote ↗
09UndatedA single obscure decision of prophecy, perhaps the choice of one word over another, could change the entire aspect of the future. He tells us "The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door.Frank Herbert / quote ↗
10UndatedIt is difficult to live in the present, pointless to live in the future and impossible to live in the past.Frank Herbert / quote ↗
11UndatedI'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 / quote ↗
12UndatedLife cannot find reasons to sustain it, cannot be a source of decent mutual regard, unless each of us resolves to breathe such qualities into it.Frank Herbert / quote ↗
13UndatedThe great mass of humankind possesses an unmistakable unit-identity. It can be one thing. It can act as a single organism.Frank Herbert / quote ↗
14UndatedAt the quantum level our universe can be seen as an indeterminate place, predictable in a statistical way only when you employ large enough numbers. Between that universe and a relatively predictable one where the passage of a single planet can be timed to a picosecond, other forces come into play. For the in-between universe where we find our daily lives, that which you believe is a dominant force. Your beliefs order the unfolding of daily events. If enough of us believe, a new thing can be made to exist. Belief structure creates a filter through which chaos is sifted into order.Frank Herbert / quote ↗
15UndatedMy Uncle Malky always said the Lord Leto never responded to prayer. He said the Lord Leto looked on prayer as attempted coercion, a form of violence against the chosen god, telling the immortal what to do: Give me a miracle, God, or I won't believe in you!Frank Herbert / quote ↗
16UndatedDangers 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 changeFrank Herbert / quote ↗
17UndatedDo actions agree with words? There's your measure of reliability. Never confine yourself to the words.Frank Herbert / quote ↗
20UndatedWe 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 / quote ↗
21UndatedBut one learns from books and reels only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things.Frank Herbert / quote ↗
22UndatedWe accept too damned many things on the explanations of people who could have good reasons for lying.Frank Herbert / quote ↗
23UndatedFannie Mae had aroused his anger, then reduced his anger to verbal breast-beating, and finally to silent hurt. Still, the love remained. Why?Frank Herbert / quote ↗
