Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert (1920-1986) was a science-fiction writer

Verified

The thing the ecologically illiterate don't realize 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, a flowing from point to point. If something dams the flow, order collapses. The untrained miss the collapse until too late. That's why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.
- Source: Kynes (Page 570, Dune)

When a wise man does not understand, he says: "I do not understand." The fool and the uncultured are ashamed of their ignorance. They remain silent when a question could bring them wisdom.
- Source: The Godmakers

Remember your philosopher's doubts, Miles. Beware! The mind of a believer stagnates. It fails to grow outward into an unlimited, infinite universe.
- Source: Taraza (Page 164, Heretics of Dune)

"Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit. This is the fine point on which all legal professions of history have based their job security."
- Source: Bene Gesserit Coda in Chapterhouse Dune

Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your own 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.
- Source: Darwi Odrade (Page 45, Chapter House Dune)

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 a lesson.
- Source: from "The Humanity of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan (page 83, Dune)

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.
- Source: Jessica speaking to Thufir Hawat (Page 182, Dune)

Good government 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.
- Source: Law of Governance, The Spacing Guild Manual (page 141, Children of Dune)

"A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating. You're there now doing the thing on paper. You're not killing the goose, you're just producing an egg. So I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. I have never had the problem of a writing block. I've heard about it. I've felt reluctant to write on some days, for whole weeks, or sometimes even longer. I'd much rather go fishing. for example. or go sharpen pencils, or go swimming, or what not. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, 'Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write.' There's no difference on paper between the two."

"I think science fiction does help, and it points in very interesting directions. It points in relativistic directions. It says that we have the imagination for these other opportunities, these other choices. We tend to tie ourselves down to limited choices. We say, 'Well, the only answer is. . .' or, 'If you would just. . .' Whatever follows these two statements narrows the choices right there. It gets the vision right down close to the ground so that you don't see anything happening outside. Humans tend not to see over a long range. Now we are required, in these generations, to have a longer range view of what we inflict on the world around us. This is where, I think, science fiction is helping. I don't think that the mere writing of such a book as Brave New World or 1984 prevents those things which are portrayed in those books from happening. But I do think they alert us to that possibility and make that possibility less likely. They make us aware that we may be going in that direction. We may be contriving a strictly controlled police culture. B. F. Skinner worries the hell out of me. He is right out of Huxley. He is standing there like a small boy saying, 'Please let me have a world like this because I feel safe in it!' He is saying, 'I want to control it.' He may be very accurate in his assessment that our total society is going in that direction and that maybe he is opting for the lesser of numerous evils, in his view. But what kind of a society would that produce? "

"The stakes in conflict do not change. Battle determines who will control the wealth or its equivalent."

"It is a wise man that does know the contented man is never poor, whilst the discontented man is never rich...."

"To 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."

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

"When 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."

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

"The proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On that path lies danger."

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

"To attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing the Darkness. It cannot be."

"Religion often partakes of the myth of progress that shields us from the terrors of an uncertain future."