Frank Herbert Dune Quotes

Humans are born with a susceptibility to that most persistent and debilitating disease of intellect: self-deception. The best of all possible worlds and the worst get their dramatic coloration from it. As nearly as we can determine, there is no natural immunity. Constant alertness is required. ~ Frank Herbert

Technology breeds anarchy. It distributes these tools at random. And with them goes the provocation for violence. The ability to make and use savage destroyers falls inevitably into the hands of smaller and smaller groups until at last the group is a single individual. Moneo ~ Frank Herbert

The terrain enforced its own rhythms. ~ Frank Herbert

A sophisticated human can become primitive. What this really means is that the human's way of life changes. Old values change, become linked to the landscape with it's plants and animals. This new existence requires a working knowledge of those multiplex and cross-linked events usually referred to as Nature. It requires a measure of respect for the inertial power within such natural systems. When a human gains this knowledge and respect, that is called "being primitive". The converse, of course, is equally true: the primitive human can become sophisticated, but not without incurring dreadful psychological damage. ~ Frank Herbert

There is the difference between us," he said. "You are God embodied. You walk around within the greatest miracle of this universe, yet you refuse to touch or see or feel or believe in it. ~ Frank Herbert

There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times to develop psychic muscles.
Muad'Dib ~ Frank Herbert

When we encounter personal problems, those things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. ~ Frank Herbert

Since every individual is accountable ultimately to the self, the formation of that self demands our utmost care and attention. ~ Frank Herbert

Madness in method, that's genius ~ Frank Herbert

Government cannot be religious and self-assertive at the same time. Religious experience needs a spontaneity which laws inevitably suppress. And you cannot govern without laws. Your laws eventually must replace morality, replace conscience, replace even the religion by which you think to govern. Sacred ritual must spring from praise and holy yearnings which hammer out a significant morality. Government, on the other hand, is a cultural organism particularly attractive to doubts, questions and contentions. I see the day coming when ceremony must take the place of faith and symbolism replaces morality. ~ Frank Herbert

Memory never recaptures reality. Memory reconstructs. All reconstructions change the original, becoming external frames of reference that inevitably fall short. ~ Frank Herbert

To know the future absolutely it to be trapped into that future absolutely. It collapses time. Present becomes future. ~ Frank Herbert

Words are such gross machinery, so primitive and ambiguous. ~ Frank Herbert

She rides the sandworm of space!
She guides through all storms
Into the land of gentle winds.
Though we sleep by the snake's den,
She guards our dreaming sould.
Shunning the desert heat,
She hides us in a cool hollow.
The gleaming of her white teeth
Guides us in the night.
By the braids of her hair
We are lifted to heaven!
Sweet fragrance, flower-scented,
Surrounds us in her presence. ~ Frank Herbert

Umman Kudu: scissors-line of jaw muscles, chin like a boot toe - a man to be trusted because the captain's vices were known. ~ Frank Herbert

Answers are a perilous grip on the universe. They can appear sensible yet explain nothing. ~ Frank Herbert

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? What is there around us that we cannot - ~ Frank Herbert

Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place. ~ Frank Herbert

Respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. ~ Frank Herbert

Color streamed into a toe of darkness testing the sand. ~ Frank Herbert

The eye that looks ahead to the safe course is closed forever. ~ Frank Herbert

The universe is full of doors. ~ Frank Herbert

To the east, the night grew a faggot of luminous grey, then seashell opalescence that dimmed the stars. There came the long, bell-tolling movement of dawn striking across a broken horizon. ~ Frank Herbert

Even the most complex math can be broken into a sequence of trivial steps. Each of these slaves has been trained to complete specific equations in an assembly-line fashion. When taken together, this collective human mind is capable of remarkable feats. Holtzman surveyed the room as if he expected his solvers to give him a resounding cheer. Instead, they studied their work with heavy-lidded eyes, moving through equation after equation with no comprehension of reasons or larger pictures. ~ Brian Herbert

Machine makers always run the risk of becoming totally machine. ~ Frank Herbert

The gravest error a thinking person can make is to believe that one particular version of history is absolute fact. History is recorded by a series of observers, none of whom is impartial. The facts are distorted by sheer passage of time and thousands of years of humanity's dark ages, deliberate misrepresentations by religious sects, and the inevitable corruption that comes from an accumulation of careless mistakes. The wise person, then, views history as a set of lessons to be learned, choices and ramifications to be considered and discussed, and mistakes that should never again be made. ~ Frank Herbert

Order generally was a product of human activity. Chaos existed as a raw material from which to create order. ~ Frank Herbert

Gurney's a romantic," the Duke growled. This talk of killing suddenly disturbed him, coming from his son. "I'd sooner you never had to kill ... but if the need arises, you do it however you can - tip or edge." He looked up at the skylight, on which the rain was drumming. ~ Frank Herbert

The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand. ~ Frank Herbert

All rebels are closet aristocrats. That's why I can convert them so easily. ~ Frank Herbert

Why is it that foolishness repeats itself with such monotonous precision? ~ Frank Herbert

The proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On that path lies danger. ~ Frank Herbert

The natural human´s an animal without a logic. Your projection of logic onto all affairs is unnatural. ~ Frank Herbert

Government and religion united, and breaking a law became sin. A smell of blasphemy arose like smoke around any questioning of governmental edicts. ~ Frank Herbert

But let us not rail about justice as long as we have arms and the freedom to use them. ~ Frank Herbert

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

You always know the creative because it is revealed openly. Concealment betrays the existence of another force entirely. ~ Frank Herbert

It is not the present which unfluences the future, thou fool, but the future which forms the present. You have it all backward. Since the future is set, an unfolding of events which will assure that future is fixed and inevitable. ~ Frank Herbert

Shield!" the old woman snapped. "You well know the weakness there! Shield your son too much, Jessica, and he'll not grow strong enough to fulfill any destiny. ~ Frank Herbert

To accept a little death is worse than death itself. ~ Frank Herbert

If you want immortality, then deny form. Whatever has form has mortality. Beyond form is the formless, the immortal. ~ 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

Educational bureaucracies dull a child's questing sensitivity. The young must be dampened down. Never let them know how good they can be. That brings change. Spend lots of committee time talking about how to deal with exceptional students. Don't spend any time dealing with how the conventional teacher feels threatened by emerging talents and squelches them because of a deep-seated desire to feel superior and safe in a safe environment. ~ Frank Herbert

And that day dawned when Arrakis lay at the hub of the universe with the wheel poised to spin. ~ Frank Herbert

Think of what this planet has done to us. Dune took my Duke and my son and shattered all our hopes and dreams as a family. It swallows people. ~ Brian Herbert

Mercy is a chimera. ~ Frank Herbert

Another might have missed the tension, but she had trained him in the Bene Gesserit Way - in the minutiae of observation. ~ Frank Herbert