Quotes from Frank Herbert

Without new experiences, something inside of us sleeps. The sleeper must awaken.

To endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe.

The test of a man isn't what you think he'll do. It's what he actually does.

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?

Law is the ultimate science.

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.

There's hope left in these dusty chords. There's a song left in our rusty hearts. We are torn and frayed but love remains.

You aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgement of your existence.

If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.

There is only one true wealth in all the universe--living time.

A stone is heavy and the sand is weighty; but a fool's wrath is heavier than them both.

When you imagine mistakes, there can be no self-defense.

To 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.

For what do you hunger, Lord?" Moneo ventured. "For a humankind which can make truly long-term decisions. Do you know the key to that ability, Moneo?" "You have said it many times, Lord. It is the ability to change your mind.

You do not beg the sun for mercy. -Maud'dib's Travail from The Stilgar Commentary

I live in an apocalyptic dream. My steps fit into it so precisely that I fear most of all I will grow bored reliving the thing so exactly.

Enemies strengthen you. Allies weaken.

I don't think it's quite that simple. Some people never observe anything, Life just happens to them. They get by on little more than a kind of dumb persistence, and they resist with anger and resentment anything that might lift them out of that false serenity.

A man's flesh is his own; the water belongs to the tribe.

If you focus your awareness only upon your own rightness, then you invite the forces of opposition to overwhelm you.

It was mostly sweet, he whispered, and you were the sweetest of all.

One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp too strongly is to be taken over by power, and thus to become its victim.

The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it.

Religion, too, is a weapon. What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government?