Top 500 Frank Herbert Quotes (2023 Update)
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101. “Beware! The mind of the believer stagnates. It fails to grow outward into an unlimited, infinite universe.”

— Frank Herbert

102. “Ambitions tend to remain undisturbed by realities.”

— Frank Herbert

103. “Radicals are only to be feared when you try to suppress them. You must demonstrate that you will use the best of what they offer.”

— Frank Herbert

104. “Many things we do naturally become difficult only when we try to make them intellectual subjects. It is possible to know so much about a subject that you become totally ignorant.”

— Frank Herbert

105. “Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past me I will turn to see fear’s path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

— Frank Herbert

106. “All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities.”

— Frank Herbert

107. “Balance is what distinguishs a people from a mob.”

— Frank Herbert

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

— Frank Herbert

109. “Control the coinage and the courts – let the rabble have the rest.”

— Frank Herbert

110. “Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place.”

— Frank Herbert

111. “It is so shocking to find out how many people do not believe that they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.”

— Frank Herbert

112. “Good governance 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.”

— Frank Herbert

113. “Justice required resort to law and that could be a fickle mistress, subject always to the whims and prejudices of those who administered the laws.”

— Frank Herbert

114. “Caution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding, passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve.”

— Frank Herbert

115. “The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows – a wall against the wind.”

— Frank Herbert

116. “They’re trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.”

— Frank Herbert

117. “Small souls who seek power over others first destroy the faith those others might have in themselves.”

— Frank Herbert

118. “If you need something to worship, then worship life – all life, every last crawling bit of it! We’re all in this beauty together!”

— Frank Herbert

119. “I give you the chameleon, whose ability to blend itself into the background tells you all you need to know about the roots of ecology and the foundations of a personal identity.”

— Frank Herbert

120. “Intelligence takes chances with limited data in an arena where mistakes are not only possible but also necessary.”

— Frank Herbert

121. “Too much knowledge never makes for simple decisions.”

— Frank Herbert

122. “There is no escape – we pay for the violence of our ancestors.”

— Frank Herbert

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

— Frank Herbert

124. “Grief is the price of victory.”

— Frank Herbert

125. “The only past which endures lies wordlessly within you.”

— Frank Herbert

126. “If there is a difference between what is said and what is done, only a fool believes what was said.”

— Frank Herbert

127. “A bad administrator is more concerned with reports than with decisions. He wants the hard record which he can display as an excuse for his errors.”

— Frank Herbert

128. “Beaurocracy destroys initiative.”

— Frank Herbert

129. “Question: Who governs the governors? Answer: Entropy.”

— Frank Herbert

130. “If enough of us believe, a new thing can be made to exist. Belief structure creates a filter through which chaos is sifted into order.”

— Frank Herbert

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

— Frank Herbert

132. “When religion and politics ride in the same cart, the whirlwind follows.”

— Frank Herbert

133. “Then came the Butlerian Jihad – two generations of chaos. The god of machine-logic was overthrown among the masses and a new concept was raised: “Man may not be replaced.” Those.”

— Frank Herbert

134. “Enemies make you stronger, allies make you weaker.”

— Frank Herbert

135. “Blood is thicker than water, but politics are thicker than blood.”

— Frank Herbert

136. “No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero.”

— Frank Herbert

137. “When strangers meet, great allowance should be made for differences of custom and training.”

— Frank Herbert

138. “The universe is full of doors.”

— Frank Herbert

139. “There is not secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves.”

— Frank Herbert

140. “Each life creates endless ripples.”

— Frank Herbert

141. “A leader is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people. He maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals and a people reverts to a mob.”

— Frank Herbert

142. “When I need to identify rebels, I look for men with principles.”

— Frank Herbert

143. “The dice cannot read their own spots.”

— Frank Herbert

144. “Life is a mask through which the universe expresses itself.”

— Frank Herbert

145. “Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.”

— Frank Herbert

146. “A ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel.”

— Frank Herbert

147. “All proofs inevitably lead to propositions which have no proof! All things are known because we want to believe in them.”

— Frank Herbert

148. “Ecology is often confused with environmentalism, while in fact, environmentalism often leaves out the fact that people, too, can be a legitimate part of an ecosystem.”

— Frank Herbert

149. “The joy of living, its beauty, is all bound up in the fact that life can surprise you.”

— Frank Herbert

150. “Good subjects must feel guilty. The guilt begins as a feeling of failure. The good autocrat provides many opportunities for failure in the populace.”

— Frank Herbert