Frank Herbert
Money to a writer is time to write.Collection: Writing
Every civilization must contend with an unconscious force which can block, betray, or countermand almost any conscious intention of the collectivity.Collection: Wise
I am like a person whose hands were kept numb, without sensation from the first moment of awareness - until one day the ability to feel is forced into them. And I say "Look! I have no hands!" But the people all around me say: "What are hands?Collection: Hands
Ecology is a dirty seven-letter word to many people. They are like heavy sleepers refusing to be aroused. "Leave me alone! It's not time to get up yet!"Collection: Dirty
Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.Collection: Research
Historians exercise great power and some of them know it. They recreate the past, changing it to fit their own interpretations. Thus, they change the future as well.Collection: Exercise
Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless nit-picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma.Collection: Experts
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.Collection: Technology
Most deadly errors arise from obsolete assumptions.Collection: Errors
It is so shocking to find out how many people do not believe that they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.Collection: Believe
Deep 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.Collection: Life
The greatest and most important problems of life cannot be solved. They can only be outgrown.Collection: Important
Caution is the path to mediocrity.Collection: Mediocrity
A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating.Collection: Creativity
The basic lesson of our relativistic universe is that things change. Any power must always meet a greater power.Collection: Lessons
Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.Collection: Adventure
There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.Collection: Hard Times
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.Collection: Past
Mankind has only one science… its the science of discontent.Collection: Mankind
The surest way to keep a secret is to make people believe they already know the answer.Collection: Thinking
The mind can go either direction under stress—toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training.Collection: Stress
Too much knowledge never makes for simple decisions.Collection: Simple
If all those around you believe some particular thing, you will soon be tempted to share in that belief.Collection: Believe
There is not secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves.Collection: Secret
The writing of history is largely a process of diversion. Most historical accounts distract attention from the secret influences behind great events.Collection: Writing
To endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe. You cannot hire a wise man or any other intellect to solve it for you. There's no writ of inquest or calling of witness to provide answers.Collection: Wise
Face your fears or they will climb over your back.Collection: Faces
Justice belongs to those who claim it, but let the claimant beware lest he create new injustice by his claim and thus set the bloody pendulum of revenge into its inexorable motionCollection: Revenge
Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit.Collection: Law