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?
Frank HerbertScientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is the task of Religion to fit man into this lawfulness.
Frank HerbertSympathy 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.
Frank HerbertWhat is important for a leader is that which makes him a leader. It is the needs of his people.
Frank HerbertThe 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.
Frank HerbertThe 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.
Frank HerbertThe greatest and most important problems of life cannot be solved. They can only be outgrown.
Frank HerbertTo be a god can ultimately become boring and degrading. There'd be reason enough for the invention of free will! A god might wish to escape into sleep and be alive only in the unconscious projections of his dream-creatures.
Frank HerbertPolice 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.
Frank HerbertOne learns from books and example only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things.
Frank HerbertWhen he wanted, he could radiate charm and sincerity, but I often wonder in these later days if anything about him was as it seemed. I think now he was a man fighting constantly to escape the bars of an invisible cage.
Frank HerbertWar is behavior with roots in the single cell of the primeval seas. Eat whatever you touch or it will eat you.
Frank HerbertYou aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgement of your existence.
Frank HerbertThen, 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.
Frank HerbertLaw 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."
Frank HerbertGreatness 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 or she is in. That person must reflect what is projected upon him or her.
Frank HerbertEmpires 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.
Frank HerbertProper 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.
Frank HerbertOne 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.
Frank HerbertMany things we do naturally become difficult only when we try to make them intellectual subjects. It is possible to know so much about a subject that you become totally ignorant.
Frank HerbertI have come to believe that holy boredom is good and sufficient reason for the invention of free will.
Frank HerbertAll governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.
Frank HerbertAll governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities.
Frank HerbertYou've heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There's an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind.
Frank HerbertRiots and comedy are but symptoms of the times, profoundly revealing. They betray the psychological tone, the deep uncertainties....and the striving for something better, plus the fear that nothing would come of it all.
Frank HerbertJustice 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 motion
Frank HerbertI hear the wind blowing across the desert and I see the moons of a winter night rising like great ships in the void. To them I make my vow: I will be resolute and make an art of government; I will balance my inherited past and become a perfect storehouse of my relic memories. And I will be known for kindliness more than for knowledge. My face will shine down the corridors of time for as long as humans exist.
Frank HerbertBless 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.
Frank HerbertWe are generalists. You can't draw neat lines around planet-wide problems. Planetology is a cut-and-fit science.
Frank HerbertWe faced it and did not resist. The storm passed through us and around us. It's gone, but we remain.
Frank HerbertIn politics, the tripod is he most unstable of all structures. It's be bad enough without the complication of a feudal trade culture which turns its back on most science.
Frank HerbertThere is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man - with human flesh.
Frank HerbertA voice hissed: "He sheds tears!" It was taken around the ring "Usal gives moisture to the dead!" He felt fingers touch his damp cheek, heard the awed whispers.
Frank Herbert