Top 500 Frank Herbert Quotes (2025 Update)
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451. “Politics: the art of appearing candid and completely open while concealing as much as possible.”

— Frank Herbert

452. “For now is my grief heavier than the sands of the seas, she thought. This world has emptied me of all but the oldest purpose: tomorrow’s life.”

— Frank Herbert

453. “Your habits always come hunting after you. The self you construct will haunt you. A ghost wandering around in search of your body, eager to possess you. We are addicted to the self we construct.”

— Frank Herbert

454. “Moral decisions are always easy to recognize,” Odrade said. “They are where you abandon self-interest.”

— Frank Herbert

455. “The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.”

— Frank Herbert

456. “The gift is the blessing of the giver.”

— Frank Herbert

457. “A voice hissed: “He sheds tears!” It was taken around the ring “Usal gives moisture to the dead!” He felt fingers touch his damp cheek, heard the awed whispers.”

— Frank Herbert

458. “One cannot have a single thing without its opposite.”

— Frank Herbert

459. “The past is no farther away than your pillow.”

— Frank Herbert

460. “Words can carry any burden we wish. All that’s required is agreement and a tradition upon which to build.”

— Frank Herbert

461. “Leaders made mistakes. And those mistakes, amplified by the numbers who followed without questioning, moved inevitably toward great disasters.”

— Frank Herbert

462. “The most perfect barrier to learning a thing is the belief that is it already known.”

— Frank Herbert

463. “But the tripod upon which Eternity swings is composed of flesh and thought and emotion.”

— Frank Herbert

464. “Prophets have a way of dying by violence.”

— Frank Herbert

465. “Irreverence is a most necessary ingredient of religion. Not to speak of its importance in philosophy. Irreverence is the only way left to us for testing our universe.”

— Frank Herbert

466. “One who rules assumes irrevocable responsibility for the ruled. You are a husbandman. This demands, at times, a selfless act of love which may only be amusing to those you rule.”

— Frank Herbert

467. “Religion began as a female monopoly, wrested from them only after its social power became too dominant. Women were the first medical researchers and practitioners. There has never been any clear balance between the sexes because power goes with certain roles as it certainly goes with knowledge.”

— Frank Herbert

468. “Knowing was a barrier which prevented learning.”

— Frank Herbert

469. “Your own emperor bestowed Arrakis on House Atreides. I am House Atreides.” The.”

— Frank Herbert

470. “Don’t sit with your back to any doors.”

— Frank Herbert

471. “Thinking you know something is a sure way to blind yourself.”

— Frank Herbert

472. “You have a nicety of awareness of the difference between a blade’s edge and its tip.”

— Frank Herbert

473. “I’ve heard enough sad histories of gods and messiahs. Why should I need special powers to forecast ruins of my own like all those others?”

— Frank Herbert

474. “Always prepare secondary ways of dealing with problems.”

— Frank Herbert

475. “A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people.”

— Frank Herbert

476. “His voice was low, charged with unspeakable adjectives.”

— Frank Herbert

477. “You never talk of likelihoods on Arrakis. You speak only of possibilities.”

— Frank Herbert

478. “Try to hold on to youth and it mocks you while it sprints away.”

— Frank Herbert

479. “Is your religion real when it costs you nothing and carries no risk? Is your religion real when you fatten upon it? Is your religion real when you commit atrocities in its name?”

— Frank Herbert

480. “Why is it that foolishness repeats itself with such monotonous precision?”

— Frank Herbert

481. “Culture! They dispense culture the better to rule. Beauty! They promote the beauty which enslaves. They create a literate ignorance – easiest thing of all. They leave nothing to chance. Chains! Everything they do forges chains, enslaves. But slaves always revolt.”

— Frank Herbert

482. “To be sighted in the land of the blind carries its own perils.”

— Frank Herbert

483. “As with all priests, you learned early to call the truth heresy.”

— Frank Herbert

484. “A human being can stand any amount of pain.”

— Frank Herbert

485. “I told my nephew of the great esteem our Emperor holds for you, Count Fenring,” the Baron said. And he thought: Mark him well, Feyd! A killer with the manners of a rabbit – this is the most dangerous kind.”

— Frank Herbert

486. “A single obscure decision of prophecy, perhaps the choice of one word over another, could change the entire aspect of the future. He tells us “The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door.”

— Frank Herbert

487. “Most humans are not strong enough to find freedom within.” Sister.”

— Frank Herbert

488. “Educational bureaucracies dull a child’s questing sensitivity.” Odrade explaining. “The young must be damped down. Never let them know how good they can be. That brings change. Spend lots of committee time talking about how to deal with exceptional students. Don’t spend any time dealing with how the conventional teacher feels threatened by emerging talents and squelches them because of a deep-seated desire to feel superior and safe in a safe environment.”

— Frank Herbert

489. “This world has emptied me of all but the oldest purpose: tomorrow’s life. I live now for my young Duke and the daughter yet to be. She.”

— Frank Herbert

490. “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.”

— Frank Herbert

491. “Then she said a good ruler has to learn his world’s language, that it’s different for every world. And I thought she meant they didn’t speak Galach on Arrakis, but she said that wasn’t it at all. She said she meant the language of the rocks and growing things, the language you don’t hear just with your ears.”

— Frank Herbert

492. “We are questioning more than the philosophy behind our dependence upon limited and limiting systems. We question the power structures that have grown up around such systems.”

— Frank Herbert

493. “I’m the well-trained fruit tree. Full of well-trained feelings and abilities and all of them grafted onto me.”

— Frank Herbert

494. “She looked at patches of blackness. Black is a blind remembering, she thought.”

— Frank Herbert

495. “Is evolution just another name for God?”

— Frank Herbert

496. “To see eternity was to be exposed to eternity’s whims, oppressed by endless dimensions.”

— Frank Herbert

497. “Is God troubled?” And her companion replied: “The sins of this universe would trouble anyone.”

— Frank Herbert

498. “Piter spoke to Jessica. “I’d thought of binding you by a threat held over your son, but I begin to see that would not have worked. I let emotion cloud reason. Bad policy for a Mentat.” -Piter De Vries.”

— Frank Herbert

499. “Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know.”

— Frank Herbert

500. “In politics, the tripod is the most unstable of all structures.”

— Frank Herbert