FHFrank Herbert

208 collected words

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.

▷ Play this voice Search these words ↗Place in time ↗life death mind truth faith knowledge love time

Quotations and sayings

01Undated

Use the first moments in study. You may miss many an opportunity for quick victory in this way, but the moment the study are in insurance of success. Take your time and be sure.

Frank Herbert / quote

02Undated

The Atreides are known to start late getting there growth.

Frank Herbert / quote

03Undated

Cynicism! That, no doubt is a greater crime than heresy.

Frank Herbert / quote

04Undated

The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: "I feed on your energy.

Frank Herbert / quote

05Undated

Clinging to any form of conservatism can be dangerous. Become too conservative and you are unprepared for surprises. You cannot depend on luck. Logic is blind and often knows only its own past. Logic is good for playing chess but is often too slow for the needs of survival.

Frank Herbert / quote

06Undated

What delicious abandon in the sleep of the child. Where do we lose it?

Frank Herbert / quote

07Undated

You must teach me the way you thrust your worries aside and turn to practical matters.

Frank Herbert / quote

08Undated

Technology tends toward avoidance of risks by investors. Uncertainty is ruled out if possible. People generally prefer the predictable. Few recognize how destructive this can be, how it imposes severe limits on variability and thus makes whole populations fatally vulnerable to the shocking ways our universe can throw the dice.

Frank Herbert / quote

09Undated

I point out to you, Marcus Claire Luyseyal, a lesson from past over-machined societies which you appear not to have learned. The devices themselves condition theusers to employ each other the way they employ machines.

Frank Herbert / quote

10Undated

I have said: "Blow out the lamp! Day is here!" And you keep saying: "Give me a lamp so I can find the day.

Frank Herbert / quote

11Undated

Most civilisation 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.

Frank Herbert / quote

12Undated

What's law? Control? Law filters chaos and what drips through? Serenity? Law -- our highest ideal and our basest nature. Don't look too closely at the law. Do, and you'll find the rationalized interpretations, the legal casuistry, the precedents of convenience. You'll find the serenity, which is just another word for death.

Frank Herbert / quote

13Undated

You see, gentlemen, they have something to die for. They've discovered they're a people. They're awakening.

Frank Herbert / quote

14Undated

A killer with the manners of a rabbit - this is the most dangerous kind.

Frank Herbert / quote

15Undated

What was it St. Augustine said? "The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.

Frank Herbert / quote

16Undated

And the question of Wester religion,” Flattery said, “is: What lies beyond death? But the question of the Zen master is: What lies beyond waking?

Frank Herbert / quote

17Undated

Hayt felt suddenly that he existed in a dream controlled by some other mind, and that he might momentarily forget this to become lost in the convolutions of that mind.

Frank Herbert / quote

18Undated

But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, "Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write.

Frank Herbert / quote

19Undated

The knife is more dangerous than the hand and the knife can be in either hand.

Frank Herbert / quote

20Undated

Piter: Ah-ah, Baron! Is it not regrettable you were unable to devise this delicious scheme by yourself?Baron: Someday I will have you strangled, Piter.Piter: Of a certainty, Baron. Enfin! But a kind act is never lost, eh?Baron: Have you been chewing verite or semuta, Piter?

Frank Herbert / quote

21Undated

Nothing wins more loyalty for a leader than an air of bravura," the Duke said. "I, therefore, cultivate an air of bravura.

Frank Herbert / quote

22Undated

If you focus your awareness only upon your own rightness, then you invite the forces of opposition to overwhelm you.

Frank Herbert / quote

23Undated

One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp too strongly is to be taken over by power, and thus to become its victim.

Frank Herbert / quote

24Undated

We’ve lost something vital, I tell you. When we lost it, we lost the ability to make good decisions. We fall upon decisions these days the way we fall upon an enemy—or wait and wait, which is a form of giving up, and we allow the decisions of others to move us. Have we forgotten that we were the ones who set this current flowing?

Frank Herbert / quote