Quotes from Frank Herbert

Don't sit with your back to any doors.

Most discipline is hidden discipline, designed not to liberate but to limit. Do not ask Why? Be cautious with How? Why? leads inexorably to paradox. How? traps you in a universe of cause and effect. Both deny the infinite.

His thoughts were too vague to be described, but they comprehended mysterious elements.

We will not run, Paul said. We'll move with dignity. We'll do what must be done.

You can't build politics on love, he said. People aren't concerned with love; it's too disordered. They prefer despotism. Too much freedom breeds chaos.

Who asks for justice? We make our own justice.

He was warrior and mystic, ogre and saint, the fox and the innocent, chivalrous, ruthless, less than a god, more than a man.

I never could bring myself to trust a traitor," the Baron said. "Not even a traitor I created.

How would we flood village and city with our information? The people must learn how well I govern them. How would they know if we didn't tell them?

My brother comes now, Alia said. Even an Emperor may tremble before Muad'Dib, for he has the strength of righteousness and heaven smiles upon him.

A 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.

I cannot lie to you any more than I could lie to myself," Paul said. "I know this. Every man should have such an auditor.

How tempting it is to raise high walls and keep out change. Rot here in our own self-satisfied comfort.

When God hath ordained a creature to die in a particular place, He causeth that creature's wants to direct him to that place.

All governments needed to remain under suspicion during their time of power including that of the Sisterhood itself. Trust no government! Not even mine!

Do as she says, you wormfaced, crawling, sand-brained piece of lizard turd!

Liberal bigots are the ones who trouble me most. I distrust the extremes. Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over any future. Scratch a liberal and find a closet aristocrat. It

Things could not be forever ordered and formulated. He had to find the rhythm of change and see between the changes to the changing itself.

We accept too damned many things on the explanations of people who could have good reasons for lying.

A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating.

At the age of fifteen, he had already learned silence.

I realize that humans cannot bear very much reality. Most lives are a flight from selfhood. Most prefer the truths of the stable. You stick your heads into the stanchions and munch contentedly until you die. Others use you for their purposes. Not once do you live outside the stable to lift your head and be your own creature. Muad'Dib came to tell you about that. Without understanding his message, you cannot revere him!

Can you collect chaos? Not collecting, that is the ultimate gathering. What can you gather without gathering yourself.

Peace demands solutions, but we never reach living solutions; we only work toward them. A fixed solution is, by definition, a dead solution. The trouble with peace is that it tends to punish mistakes instead of rewarding brilliance. —