Top 500 Frank Herbert Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “Humans are almost always lonely.”

— Frank Herbert

302. “Dune was a world of paradox now – a world under siege, yet the center of power. To come under siege, he decided, was the inevitable fate of power.”

— Frank Herbert

303. “Time is a measure of space, just as a range-finder is a measure of space, but measuring locks us into the place we measure.”

— Frank Herbert

304. “Every civilization depends on the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness-they cannot work and their civilization collapses.”

— Frank Herbert

305. “Those who would repeat the past must control the teaching of history.”

— Frank Herbert

306. “Hard tasks need hard ways.”

— Frank Herbert

307. “We tend to become like the worst in those we oppose.”

— Frank Herbert

308. “I don’t worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It’s a matter of just sitting down and working.”

— Frank Herbert

309. “At root, I am happy with myself. I do not mind being alone.”

— Frank Herbert

310. “There are limits to power, as those who put their hopes in a constitution always discover.”

— Frank Herbert

311. “Governments do not know what they cannot do until after they cease to be governments. Each government carries the seeds of its own destruction.”

— Frank Herbert

312. “Argument closes off the doors of the senses. It always masks violence. Continued too long, argument always leads to violence.”

— Frank Herbert

313. “Hittite law emphasized restitution rather than revenge. Humankind lost a certain useful practicality when it chose the other Semitic response – never to forgive and never to forget.”

— Frank Herbert

314. “The thing about computers – it’s like training a dog. You have to be smarter than the dog. If you make a computer smarter than you are, that has to be accident, synergy, or divine intervention.”

— Frank Herbert

315. “It is said that there is a principle of conflict which originated with the single cell and has never deteriorated.”

— Frank Herbert

316. “Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit.”

— Frank Herbert

317. “In their passion for sameness, the tyrants made themselves more and more powerful. All others grew correspondingly weaker and weaker. New bureaus and directorates, odd ministries, leaped into existence for the most improbable purposes. These became the citadels of a new aristocracy, rulers who kept the giant wheel of government careening along, spreading destruction, violence, and chaos wherever they touched.”

— Frank Herbert

318. “If I’d been born in my grandfather’s time, I’d have made my grandfather’s mistakes. Theres no doubt of it. I just don’t want to make my grandfather’s mistakes today.”

— Frank Herbert

319. “We never completely escape the teachers of our childhood nor any of the patterns that formed us.”

— Frank Herbert

320. “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.”

— Frank Herbert

321. “She felt that her body had walked into this place with her soul creeping behind.”

— Frank Herbert

322. “Anything less than abject submission has to have some attack in it.”

— Frank Herbert

323. “Men always fear things which move by themselves.”

— Frank Herbert

324. “Words themselves were the ultimate barrier to revelation.”

— Frank Herbert

325. “I warn you that ignorance thrives on hysteria.”

— Frank Herbert

326. “What greater gift is there than to demonstrate you need not fear death?”

— Frank Herbert

327. “The basic lesson of our relativistic universe is that things change. Any power must always meet a greater power.”

— Frank Herbert

328. “Dangers lurk in all systems. Systems incorporate the unexamined beliefs of their creators. Adopt a system, accept its beliefs, and you help strengthen the resistance to change.”

— Frank Herbert

329. “If all those around you believe some particular thing, you will soon be tempted to share in that belief.”

— Frank Herbert

330. “Educational bureaucracies dull a child’s questing sensitivity.”

— Frank Herbert

331. “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.”

— Frank Herbert

332. “This is the awe-inspiring universe of magic: There are no atoms, only waves and motions all around. Here, you discard all belief in barriers to understanding. You put aside understanding itself. This universe cannot be seen, cannot be heard, cannot be detected in any way by fixed perceptions. It is the ultimate void where no preordained screens occur upon which forms may be projected. You have only one awareness here – the screen of the magi: Imagination! Here, you learn what it is to be human. You are a creator of order, of beautiful shapes and systems, an organizer of chaos.”

— Frank Herbert

333. “Move slowly and the day of your revenge will come,” Tuek said. “Speed is a device of Shaitan. Cool your sorrow–we’ve the diversions for it; three things there are that ease the heart–water, green grass, and the beauty of woman.”

— Frank Herbert

334. “Laws tend to be temporary over the long haul, Moneo. There is no such thing as rule-governed creativity.”

— Frank Herbert

335. “Power attracts the corruptible. Absolute power attracts the absolutely corruptible. This is the danger of entrenched bureaucracy to its subject population. Even spoils systems are preferable because levels of tolerance are lower and the corrupt can be thrown out periodically. Entrenched bureaucracy seldom can be touched short of violence. Beware when Civil Service and Military join hands!”

— Frank Herbert

336. “How do you call among you the little mouse, the mouse that jumps?” Paul asked, remembering the pop-hop of motion at Tuono Basin. He illustrated with one hand. A chuckle sounded through the troop. “We call that one muad’dib,” Stilgar said. Jessica.”

— Frank Herbert

337. “Is that the name you wish, Muad’Dib?” Stilgar asked. “I am an Atreides,” Paul whispered, and then louder: “It’s not right that I give up entirely the name my father gave me. Could I be known among you as Paul-Muad’Dib?” “You are Paul-Muad’Dib,” Stilgar said. And.”

— Frank Herbert

338. “We pray to a moon: she is round – Luck with us will then abound, What we seek for shall be found In the land of solid ground.”

— Frank Herbert

339. “My son displays a general garment and you claim it’s cut to your fit?” Jessica asked. “What a fascinating revelation.”

— Frank Herbert

340. “Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over any future. Scratch a liberal and find a closet aristocrat.”

— Frank Herbert

341. “Fortune passes everywhere.”

— Frank Herbert

342. “It was a scene of such beauty it caught all his attention. Some things beggar likeness, he thought. He.”

— Frank Herbert

343. “Humans must never submit to animals.’ “A dry sob shook her. In a low voice, she said: “I’ve been so lonely.” “It should be one of the tests,” the old woman said. “Humans are almost always lonely.”

— Frank Herbert

344. “Killing with the point lacks artistry, but don’t let that hold your hand when the opening presents itself.”

— Frank Herbert

345. “Sir, I honor and respect the personal dignity of any man who respects my dignity.”

— Frank Herbert

346. “The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door.′ And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning, ‘That path leads ever down into stagnation.”

— Frank Herbert

347. “The hearts of all men dwell in the same wilderness.”

— Frank Herbert

348. “He understood terrible purposes. They drove against all odds. They were their own necessity. Paul felt that he had been infected with terrible purpose. He did not know yet what the terrible purpose was.”

— Frank Herbert

349. “The old woman was a witch shadow – hair like matted spiderwebs, hooded ’round darkness of features, eyes like glittering jewels.”

— Frank Herbert

350. “He was warrior and mystic, ogre and saint, the fox and the innocent, chivalrous, ruthless, less than a god, more than a man.”

— Frank Herbert