Quotes by Frank Herbert

Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Try looking into that place where you dare not look! Youll find me there, staring out at you!

Face your fears or they will climb over your back.

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.

The man without emotions is the one to fear.

motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches.

You have a nicety of awareness of the difference between a blades edge and its tip.

Military foolishness is ultimately suicidal. They believe that by risking death they pay the price of any violent behavior against enemies of their own choosing. They have the invader mentality, that false sense of freedom from responsibility for your own actions.

It is far better to win a battle through skilled leadership and wise decisions than violence and bloodshed. It may not seem as glorious to the uninitiated, but in the end it results in fewer wounds--of any kind.

Governments always commit their entire populations when the demands grow heavy enough. By their passive acceptance, these populations become accessories to whatever is done in their name.

Liberty and Freedom are complex concepts. They go back to religious ideas of Free Will and are related to the Ruler Mystique implicit in absolute monarchs. Without absolute monarchs patterned after the Old Gods and ruling by the grace of a belief in religious indulgence, Liberty and Freedom would never have gained their present meaning. These ideals owe their very existence to past examples of oppression. And the forces that maintain such ideas will erode unless renewed by dramatic teaching or new oppressions. This is the most basic key to my life.

Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.

Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual. -Words of Muaddib by Princess Irulan.

Democracy is susceptible to being led astray by having scapegoats paraded in front of the electorate. Get the rich, the greedy, the criminals, the stupid leader and so on ad nauseam.

Create or arouse such unbridled forces and you built carnal fantasies of enormous complexity. You could lead whole populations around by their desires, by their fantasy projections.

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.

Give as few orders as possible, his father had told him once long ago. Once youve given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.

Any man who retreats into a cave which has only one opening deserves to die.

But oh, the perils of leadership in a species so anxious to be told what to do. How little they knew of what they created by their demands. Leaders made mistakes. And those mistakes, amplified by the numbers who followed without questioning, moved inevitably toward great disasters.