About Frank Herbert
Franklin Patrick Herbert Jr. (October 8, 1920 – February 11, 1986) was an American science-fiction author best known for the 1965 novel Dune and its five sequels.
Though he became famous for his novels, he also wrote short stories and worked as a newspaper journalist, photographer, book reviewer, ecological consultant, and lecturer.
Frank Herbert’s Dune Saga
The Dune saga, set in the distant future, and taking place over millennia, explores complex themes, such as the long-term survival of the human species, human evolution, planetary science and ecology, and the intersection of religion, politics, economics and power in a future where humanity has long since developed interstellar travel and settled many thousands of worlds.
The whole series is widely considered to be among the classics of the genre.
Dune (The Dune Sequence Book 1)
Set in the distant future in a feudal interstellar society, Dune tells the story of Paul Atreides, whose family takes stewardship of the planet Arrakis. The planet, a desert wasteland, is the only source of melange, or “the spice”, a drug that extends life, enhances mental abilities and necessary for space navigation, which makes the control of the planet a coveted and dangerous undertaking. The story explores the multi-layered interactions of politics (the feudal Houses and Emperor), religion (Bene Gesserit searching for Kwisatz Haderach, Fremen native of the planet Arrakis), ecology (surviving in the desert, Shai-hulud or Sandworms), technology (Mentats, Guild Navigators), and human emotion, as the factions of the empire confront each other in a struggle for the control of Arrakis and its spice.
Dune is the best-selling science fiction novel of all time. Its an absolute must-read book if you are a fan of science fiction.
Dune Quotes
Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.
What do you despise? By this are you truly known.
The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.
Hope clouds observation.
The mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.
Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.
There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man – with human flesh.
But it’s well known that repression makes a religion flourish.
There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.
I must not fear. 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 I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong – faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it’s too late.
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.
The mind can go either direction under stress—toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training.
He who controls the spice controls the universe.
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.
Whether a thought is spoken or not it is a real thing and it has power.
Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.
What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises—no matter the mood! Mood’s a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It’s not for fighting.
There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times to develop psychic muscles. — Muad’Dib
“Give as few orders as possible,” his father had told him once long ago. “Once you’ve given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.”
The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.
Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.
There is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe. It has symmetry, elegance, and grace – these qualities you find always in that the true artist captures. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, the way sand trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of the creosote bush of the pattern of its leaves. We try to copy these patterns in our lives and in our society, seeking the rhythms, the dances, the forms that comfort. Yet, it is possible to see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. It is clear that the ultimate pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all things move towards death.
Anything outside yourself, this you can see and apply your logic to it. But it’s a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, these things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. We tend to flounder around, blaming everything but the actual, deep-seated thing that’s really chewing on us.
It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.
Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.
The people who can destroy a thing, they control it.
Dune Messiah (The Dune Sequence Book 2)
Dune Messiah continues the story of Paul Atreides, now the Maud’dib to the Fremen and the Emperor of the universe. Paul, by becoming the Messiah, unleashes the Fremen jihad on the universe with 61 billion people perishing, and the Bene Gesserit, Spacing Guild, and Tleilaxu enter into a conspiracy to dethrone Paul.
Dune Messiah Quotes
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.
Truth suffers from too much analysis.
-Ancient Fremen Saying
If you need something to worship, then worship life – all life, every last crawling bit of it! We’re all in this beauty together!
“Constitutions become the ultimate tyranny,” Paul said. “They’re organized power on such a scale as to be overwhelming. The constitution is social power mobilized and it has no conscience. It can crush the highest and the lowest, removing all dignity and individuality. It has an unstable balance point and no limitations.”
The flesh surrenders itself. Eternity takes back its own. Our bodies stirred these waters briefly, danced with a certain intoxication before the love of life and self, dealt with a few strange ideas, then submitted to the instruments of Time. What can we say of this? I occurred. I am not…yet, I occurred.
Children of Dune (The Dune Sequence Book 3)
Children of Dune Quotes
The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth.
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 gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.
Most deadly errors arise from obsolete assumptions.
The child who refuses to travel in the father’s harness, this is the symbol of man’s most unique capability.
“I do not have to be what my father was. I do not have to obey my father’s rules or even believe everything he believed. It is my strength as a human that I can make my own choices of what to believe and what not to believe, of what to be and what not to be.”
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.
The future remains uncertain and so it should, for it is the canvas upon which we paint our desires. Thus always the human condition faces a beautifully empty canvas. We possess only this moment in which to dedicate ourselves continuously to the sacred presence which we share and create.
One learns from books and example only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things.
To know a thing well, know its limits; Only when pushed beyond its tolerance will its true nature be seen.
-The Amtal Rule
God Emperor Of Dune (The Dune Sequence Book 4)
God Emperor Of Dune Quotes
The truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it.
Most civilization is based on cowardice. It’s so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame.
Most men go through life unchallenged, except at the final moment.
When I need to identify rebels, I look for men with principles.
This wise man observed that wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.
Heretics of Dune (The Dune Sequence Book 5)
Heretics of Dune Quotes
The surest way to keep a secret is to make someone think they already know the answer.
Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept?
Chapterhouse: Dune (The Dune Sequence Book 6)
Chapterhouse: Dune Quotes
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires.
Seek discipline and find your liberty.
Do actions agree with words? There’s your measure of reliability. Never confine yourself to the words.
Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect any who seek it.
Other Quotes by Frank Herbert
There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.
The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.
A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.
Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who so survive.
The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.
What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do without thinking.
Things we do without thinking-there’s the real danger.
Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place.
Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?
Knowing where the trap is—that’s the first step in evading it.
Guilt starts as a feeling of failure.
Never attempt to reason with people who know they are right!
Nature does not make mistakes. Right and wrong are human categories.
Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.
Education is no substitute for intelligence.
Survival is the ability to swim in strange water.
Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.
To endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe.
There is only one true wealth in all the universe–living time.
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