Dune Frank Herbert Quotes

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.

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.

The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.

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.

What do you despise? By this are you truly known.

There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.

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.

It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.

Hope clouds observation.

The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.

Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.

He who controls the spice controls the universe.

A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.

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.

When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong - faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late.

Truth suffers from too much analysis. -Ancient Fremen Saying

The people who can destroy a thing, they control it.

Survival is the ability to swim in strange water.

Fear is the mind-killer.

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.

Try looking into that place where you dare not look! You'll find me there, staring out at you!

What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises—no matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It's not for fighting.

If wishes were fishes, we'd all cast nets.

Do actions agree with words? There's your measure of reliability. Never confine yourself to the words.

Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife - chopping off what's incomplete and saying: 'Now, it's complete because it's ended here.' - from "Collected Sayings of Maud'Dib'' by the Princess Irulan

Whether a thought is spoken or not it is a real thing and it has power," Tuek said. "You might find the line between life and death among the Fremen to be too sharp and quick.

The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.

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.

If you need something to worship, then worship life - all life, every last crawling bit of it! We're all in this beauty together!

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.

Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect any who seek it.

Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.

Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.

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. - Politics as Repeat Phenomenon: Bene Gesserit Training Manual

Proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you have always known.

There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man - with human flesh.

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

The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth.

The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows - a wall against the wind.

Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual. -Words of Muad'dib by Princess Irulan.

Here lies a toppled god. His fall was not a small one. We did but build his pedestal, A narrow and a tall one.

Give as few orders as possible," his father had told him once long ago. "Once you've given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.

Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock.

Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.

The truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it.

The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.

This wise man observed that wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.

My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something cannot emerge from nothing,' he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable 'the truth' can be.

They are not mad. They're trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.

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.

The surest way to keep a secret is to make someone think they already know the answer.

How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him.

Grave this on your memory, lad: A world is supported by four things..." she held up four big-knuckled fingers. "...the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these things are as nothing..." She closed her fingers into a fist. "...without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!

Any man who retreats into a cave which has only one opening deserves to die.

When I am Weaker Thn 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.

The flesh surrenders itself. Eternity takes back its own. Our bodies stirred these waters briefly, danced with a certain intoxication before the love of life and self, dealt with a few strange ideas, then submitted to the instruments of Time. What can we say of this? I occurred. I am not...yet, I occurred.

Do you wrestle with dreams? Do you contend with shadows? Do you move in a kind of sleep? Time has slipped away. Your life is stolen. You tarried with trifles, Victim of your folly.

Then, as his planet killed him, it occurred to Kynes that his father and all the other scientists were wrong, that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error.

One learns from books and example only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things.

We faced it and did not resist. The storm passed through us and around us. It's gone, but we remain.

It is difficult to live in the present, pointless to live in the future and impossible to live in the past.

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

When I need to identify rebels, I look for men with principles

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.

But it's well known that repression makes a religion flourish.

What does a mirror look at?

The future remains uncertain and so it should, for it is the canvas upon which we paint our desires. Thus always the human condition faces a beautifully empty canvas. We possess only this moment in which to dedicate ourselves continuously to the sacred presence which we share and create.

Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.

Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, 'I am not the kind of person I want to be.' It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied.

And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning 'That path leads ever down into stagnation.

To know a thing well, know its limits; Only when pushed beyond its tolerance will its true nature be seen. -The Amtal Rule

Knowing where the trap is—that's the first step in evading it.

Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It's shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad'Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.

Paradise on my right, Hell on my left and the Angel of Death behind.

Reason is the first victim of strong emotion," Scytale murmured.

We have eternity, beloved." "You may have eternity. I have only now." "But this is eternity.

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: Dune

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

What senses do we lack that we cannot see or hear another world all around us?

No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero

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.

Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who so survive.

Good governance never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders.

Most men go through life unchallenged, except at the final moment.

Face your fears or they will climb over your back.

Most deadly errors arise from obsolete assumptions.

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?

Caution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding, passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve.

If you rely only on your eyes, your other senses weaken.

The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door.

For now is my grief heavier than the sands of the seas, she thought. This world has emptied me of all but the oldest purpose: tomorrow's life.

Think on it, Chani: the princess will have the name, yet she'll live as less than a concubine - never to know a moment of tenderness from the man to whom she's bound. While we, Chani, we who carry the name of concubine - history will call us wives.

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.

There is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe. It has symmetry, elegance, and grace - these qualities you find always in that the true artist captures. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, the way sand trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of the creosote bush of the pattern of its leaves. We try to copy these patterns in our lives and in our society, seeking the rhythms, the dances, the forms that comfort. Yet, it is possible to see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. It is clear that the ultimate pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all things move towards death.

Constitutions become the ultimate tyranny," Paul said. "They’re organized power on such a scale as to be overwhelming. The constitution is social power mobilized and it has no conscience. It can crush the highest and the lowest, removing all dignity and individuality. It has an unstable balance point and no limitations.

Much that was called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility toward life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eye of God, that knowledge without action is empty. All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you’ve always known.

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.

Many have marked the speed with which Muad'Dib learned the necessities of Arrakis. The Bene Gesserit, of course, know the basis of this speed. For the others, we can say that Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad'Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.

The thing the ecologically illiterate don't realise about an ecosystem is that it's a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche. A system has order, flowing from point to point. If something dams that flow, order collapses. The untrained might miss that collapse until it was too late. That's why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.