Frank Herbert
The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door.Collection: Time
I never thought it would be easy to serve God," she said. "I just didn't think it would be this hard.Collection: Thinking
The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.Collection: Order
Absolute prediction is completion . . . is death!Collection: Predictions
The problem of leadership is inevitably: Who will play God?" Muad'DibCollection: Play
If you ask "Should we be in space?" you ask a nonsense question. We are in space. We will be in space.Collection: Space
Death makes a prophet's voice louder.Collection: Voice
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?Collection: Giving Up
If we define Futurism as an exploration beyond accepted limits, then the nature of limiting systems becomes the first object of exploration.Collection: Limits
There are limits to power, as those who put their hopes in a constitution always discover.Collection: Limits
Humans live best when each has his place, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things. Destroy the place and destroy the person.Collection: Schemes
There's an unwritten compact between you and the reader. If someone enters a bookstore and sets down hard earned money (energy) for your book, you owe that person some entertainment and as much more as you can give.Collection: Book
Sympathy for the enemy -- a weakness of police and armies alike. Most perilous are the unconscious sympathies directing you to preserve your enemy intact because the enemy is your justification for existence.Collection: Army
Infinity? It attracts us like a floodlight in the night.Collection: Night
Enemies strengthn you. Allies weaken you.Collection: Enemy
A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people.Collection: Leadership
A creature who has spent his life creating one particular representation of his selfdom will die rather than become the antithesis of that representationCollection: Creating
To know the future absolutely it to be trapped into that future absolutely. It collapses time. Present becomes future.Collection: Collapse
Ask what Infinity might produce and the only answer possible was, "Anything." Any good, any evil; any god, any devil.Collection: Evil
Jessica stopped beside him, said: 'What delicious abandon in the sleep of a child.' He spoke mechanically: 'If only adults could relax like that.' 'Yes.' 'Where do we lose it?' he murmured. 'We do, indeed, lose something,' she said.Collection: Children
There is in each of us an ancient force that takes and an ancient force that gives. A man finds little difficulty facing that place within himself where the taking force dwells, but it's almost impossible for him to see into the giving force without changing into something other than man. For a woman, the situation is reversed. ... These things are so ancient within us that they're ground into each separate cell of our bodies... It's as easy to be overwhelmed by giving as by taking.Collection: Men
You do not take from this universe. It grants you what it will.Collection: Grants
What I'm saying in my books boils down to this: Mine religion for what is good and avoid what is deleterious. Don't condemn people who need it. Be very careful when that need becomes fanatical.Collection: Book
If there is a difference between what is said and what is done, only a fool believes what was said.Collection: Believe
Prisons are needed only to provide the illusion that courts and police are effective. They're a kind of job insurance.Collection: Jobs
FEAR IS THE MIND-KILLER. FEAR IS THE LITTLE-DEATH THAT BRINGS TOTAL OBLITERATION.Collection: Fear
The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called "spannungsbogen" -- which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.Collection: Self
The clear and safe path leads evermore into stagnationCollection: Safe
Governments do not know what they cannot do until after they cease to be governments. Each government carries the seeds of its own destruction.Collection: Government
Thinking you know something is a sure way to blind yourself.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Believe
Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your life. The object can be stated this way: Live the best life you can. Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck. Darwi Odrade - Chapterhouse: DuneCollection: Player
When religion and politics ride in the same cart, the whirlwind follows.Collection: Whirlwind
Ambitions tend to remain undisturbed by realities.Collection: Ambition
Hope clouds observation.Collection: Hope
Police are inevitably corrupted. ... Police always observe that criminals prosper. It takes a pretty dull policeman to miss the fact that the position of authority is the most prosperous criminal position available.Collection: Missing
Bless the Maker and His water. Bless the coming and going of Him. May His passage cleanse the world. May He keep the world for His people.Collection: People
The highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.Collection: Nature
In my estimation, more misery has been created by reformers than by any other force in human history.Collection: Misery
Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock.Collection: Real
Anything outside yourself, this you can see and apply your logic to it. But it's a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, these things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. We tend to flounder around, blaming everything but the actual, deep-seated thing that's really chewing on us.Collection: Encounters
Why is it that foolishness repeats itself with such monotonous precision?Collection: Precision
The 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.Collection: Children
Religion, too, is a weapon. What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government?Collection: Government
The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it.Collection: Over It
Law of the Minimum: "The worst potential competition for any organism can come from its own kind. The species consumes necessities. Growth is limited by that necessity which is present in the least amount. The least favourable condition controls the rate of growth."Collection: Law
To the soul's desires The body listens What the flesh requires Keeps the heart imprisonedCollection: Heart
Polish comes from the cities; wisdom from the desert.Collection: Cities
To determine if you're human. Be silent.Collection: Silent