Frank Herbert quotes - page 8

Enemies strengthn you. Allies weaken you. (Frank Herbert)
Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is the task of Religion to fit man into this lawfulness.
Frank Herbert
History is a constant race between invention and catastrophe.
Frank Herbert
It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.
Frank Herbert
Don't give over all of your critical faculties to people in power, no matter how admirable those people may appear to be.
Frank Herbert
Equal justice and equal opportunity are ideals we should seek, but we should recognize that humans administer the ideals and that humans do not have equal ability.
Frank Herbert
It is the systems themselves that I see as dangerous.
Frank Herbert
There must be limits to any excitement. Drug yourself into a placid "norm." Moderation is the key word.
Frank Herbert
It is demonstrable that power structures tend to attract people who want power for the sake of power and that a significant proportion of such people are imbalanced - in a word, insane.
Frank Herbert
No matter how finely you subdivide time and space, each tiny division contains infinity.
Frank Herbert
I now believe that evolution, or deevolution, never ends short of death, that no society has ever achieved an absolute pinnacle, that all humans are not created equal. (Frank Herbert)
If a leader cannot admit mistakes, these mistakes will be hidden. Who says our leaders must be perfect? Where do they learn this?
Frank Herbert
The flaw must lie in our methods of description, in languages, in social networks of meaning, in moral structures, and in philosophies and religions - all of which convey implicit limits where no limits exist.
Frank Herbert
The thing we must do intensely is be human together. People are more important than things.
Frank Herbert
We must develop an absolute priority of humans ahead of profit - any humans ahead of any profit. Then we will survive. ... Together.
Frank Herbert
The current utopian ideal being touted by people as politically diverse (on the surface, but not underneath) as President Richard M. Nixon and Senator Edward M. Kennedy goes as follows - no deeds of passion allowed, no geniuses, no criminals, no imaginative creators of the new.
Frank Herbert
Don't condemn people who need it. Be very careful when that need becomes fanatical.
Frank Herbert
Whether a thought is spoken or not it is a real thing and it has power," Tuek said. "You might find the line between life and death among the Fremen to be too sharp and quick.
Frank Herbert
There is only one true wealth in all the universe--living time.
Frank Herbert
What senses do we lack that we cannot see or hear another world all around us?
Frank Herbert
They are not mad. They're trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous. (Frank Herbert)
Do you wrestle with dreams? Do you contend with shadows? Do you move in a kind of sleep? Time has slipped away. Your life is stolen. You tarried with trifles, Victim of your folly.
Frank Herbert
Questions are my enemies. For my questions explode!
Frank Herbert
Dune was aimed at this whole idea of the infallible leader because my view of history says mistakes made by a leader (or made in a leader's name) are amplified by the numbers who follow without question. That's how 900 people wound up in Guyana drinking poison Kool-Aid. That's how the U. S. said "Yes, sir, Mister Charismatic John Kennedy!" and found itself embroiled in Vietnam. That's how Germany said "Sieg Heil!"
Frank Herbert
When a wise man does not understand, he says: "I do not understand."
Frank Herbert