Quotes by Frank Herbert

“The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.”

“The difference between sentiment and being sentimental is the following: Sentiment is when a driver swerves out of the way to avoid hitting a rabbit on the road. Being sentimental is when the same driver, when swerving away from the rabbit, hits a pedestrian.”

“Kindness is the beginning of cruelty.”

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

“Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.”

“....the most persistent principles of the universe [are] accident and error.”

“That day of wrath, that dreadful day, when heaven and earth shall pass away.”

“It is a not a fear of death but rather a fear of ending life unfulfilled.”

There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.

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

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.

Guilt starts as a feeling of failure.

Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class -- whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.

The truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it.

To be a god can ultimately become boring and degrading. Thered be reason enough for the invention of free will! A god might wish to escape into sleep and be alive only in the unconscious projections of his dream-creatures.

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.

Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.

My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. Something cannot emerge from nothing, he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable the truth can be.

Education is no substitute for intelligence.

I am not the river I am the net.