Frank Herbert
Truth suffers from too much analysis.Collection: Truth
The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.Collection: Knowledge
Religion often partakes of the myth of progress that shields us from the terrors of an uncertain future.Collection: Future
Respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality.Collection: Truth
If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.Collection: Government
How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him.Collection: Anger
One of the best things to come out of the home computer revolution could be the general and widespread understanding of how severely limited logic really is.Collection: Home
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.Collection: Freedom
Wealth is a tool of freedom, but the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.Collection: Freedom
To attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing the Darkness. It cannot be.Collection: Truth
Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.Collection: Change
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.Collection: Fear
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.Collection: Religion
He who can destroy a thing, can control a thing.
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?
Enemies make you stronger, allies make you weaker.
Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.
Kindness is the beginning of cruelty.
What do you despise? By this are you truly known.
There is no escape - we pay for the violence of our ancestors.
The proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On that path lies danger.
The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.
It is a wise man that does know the contented man is never poor, whilst the discontented man is never rich.
To suspect your own mortality is to know the beginning of terror, to learn irrefutably that you are mortal is to know the end of terror.
Something cannot emerge from nothing.
The stakes in conflict do not change. Battle determines who will control the wealth or its equivalent.
The difference between sentiment and being sentimental is the following: Sentiment is when a driver swerves out of the way to avoid hitting a rabbit on the road. Being sentimental is when the same driver, when swerving away from the rabbit, hits a pedestrian.
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities.Collection: War
Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect all who seek it ... We should grant power over our affairs only to those who are reluctant to hold it and then only under conditions that increase that reluctance.Collection: Affair
Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class -- whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.Collection: Government
When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.Collection: Stronger
The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.Collection: Love
The undeserving maintain power by promoting hysteria.Collection: Hysteria
The best contribution one can make to humanity is to improve oneself.Collection: Humanity
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.Collection: Wise
The mistakes (of leaders) are amplified by the numbers who follow them without question. Charismatic leaders tend to build up followings, power structures and these power structures tend to be taken over by people who are corruptible. I don't think that the old saw about 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely' is accurate: I think power attracts the corruptible.Collection: Mistake
Never attempt to reason with people who know they are right!Collection: People
Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.Collection: Belief
Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.Collection: Men
Technology is both a tool for helping humans and for destroying them. This is the paradox of our times which we're compelled to face.Collection: Technology
No matter how much we ask after the truth, self-awareness is often unpleasant. We do not feel kindly toward the Truthsayer.Collection: Truth
Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept?Collection: Hate
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.Collection: Inspirational
Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's execution that counts.Collection: Ideas
Most believe that a satisfactory future requires a return to an idealized past, a past which never in fact existed.Collection: Believe
Reason is the first victim of strong emotion.Collection: Strong
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.Collection: War
There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Children
Knowing where the trap is-- that's the first step in evading it.Collection: Knowing