Life - all life - is in the service of life. Necessary nutrients are made available to life by life in greater and greater richness as the diversity of life increases. The entire landscape comes alive, filled with relationships and relationships within relationships.
Frank HerbertBureaucracy 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?
Frank HerbertEvery civilization depends on the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness-they cannot work and their civilization collapses.
Frank HerbertThere'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.
Frank HerbertDo actions agree with words? There's your measure of reliability. Never confine yourself to the words.
Frank HerbertKilling with the point lacks artistry, but don't let that hold your hand when the opening presents itself.
Frank HerbertAtrocity is recognized as such by victim and predator alike, by all who learn about it at whatever remove. Atrocity has no excuses, no mitigating argument. Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. It is self-perpetuating upon itself - a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred.
Frank HerbertWe’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?
Frank HerbertShow me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock.
Frank HerbertThese are illusions of popular history which successful religion must promote: Evil men never prosper; only the brave deserve the fair; honesty is the best policy; actions speak louder than words; virtue always triumpths; a good deed is its own rewards; any bad human can be reformed; religious talismans protect one from demon possession; only females understand the ancient mysteries; the rich are doomed to unhappiness
Frank HerbertReligion 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.
Frank HerbertThe vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door.
Frank HerbertAnswers are a perilous grip on the universe. They can appear sensible yet explain nothing.
Frank HerbertCaution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding, passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve.
Frank HerbertTo 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.
Frank HerbertWhen 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.
Frank HerbertPrisons are needed only to provide the illusion that courts and police are effective. They're a kind of job insurance.
Frank HerbertGovernments do not know what they cannot do until after they cease to be governments. Each government carries the seeds of its own destruction.
Frank Herbert... motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches.
Frank HerbertA person cries out in life because it's lonely and because life's been broken off from whatever created it. But no matter how much you hate life, you love it too. It's like a caldron boiling with everything you have to have, but very painful to the lips.
Frank HerbertWhen 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 to late.
Frank HerbertMaking workable choices occurs in a crucible of informative mistakes. Thus Intelligence accepts fallibility. And when absolute (infallible) choices are not known, Intelligence takes chances with limited data in an arena where mistakes are not only possible but also necessary.
Frank HerbertI'm the well-trained fruit tree. Full of well-trained feelings and abilities and all of them grafted onto me
Frank HerbertAnything 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.
Frank Herbert. . . is to attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing Darkness. It cannot be.
Frank HerbertTo know a thing well, know it's limits; Only when pushed beyond it's tolerance will it's true nature be seen. -The Amtal Rule
Frank HerbertArgument closes off the doors of the senses. It always masks violence. Continued too long, argument always leads to violence.
Frank HerbertThere has never been a truly selfless rebel, just hypocrites—conscious hypocrites or unconscious hypocrites, it’s all the same.
Frank Herbert