Quotes from Frank Herbert
Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over any future. Scratch a liberal and find a closet aristocrat.
— Frank Herbert
A good bureaucracy is the best tool of oppression ever invented.
— Frank Herbert
You cannot go on forever stealing what you need without regard to those who come after. The physical qualities of a planet are written into its economic and political record.
— Frank Herbert
Grave this on your memory, lad: A world is supported by four things... She held up four big-knuckled fingers. .. the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing... She closed her fingers into a fist. .. without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!
— Frank Herbert
A world is supported by four things…." She held up four big-knuckled fingers. "…the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing…." She closed her fingers into a fist. "…without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that
— Frank Herbert
In that instant, Paul saw how Stilgar had been transformed from the Fremen naib to a creature of the Lisan al-Gaib, a receptacle for awe and obedience. It was a lessening of the man, and Paul felt the ghost-wind of the jihad in it.
— Frank Herbert
And what have they created?" Taraza asked. "Only the image of evil stupidity?" "Act stupid long enough and you become stupid
— Frank Herbert
Grave this on your memory, lad: A world is supported by four things…." She held up four big-knuckled fingers. "…the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing…." She closed her fingers into a fist. "…without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!
— Frank Herbert
Technology tends toward avoidance of risks by investors. Uncertainty is ruled out if possible. People generally prefer the predictable. Few recognize how destructive this can be, how it imposes severe limits on variability and thus makes whole populations fatally vulnerable to the shocking ways our universe can throw the dice.
— Frank Herbert
I am a leg of the death tripod that will destroy our foes.
— Frank Herbert
The meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture—it begins in the dignity with which we treat our dead.
— Frank Herbert
It supports a ruling class that lives as ruling classes have lived in all times while, beneath them, a semihuman mass of semislaves exists on the leavings…
— Frank Herbert