Quotes about Power
To use raw power is to make yourself infinitely vulnerable to greater powers.
- Frank Herbert
All of history is a malleable instrument in my hands. Ohhh, I have accumulated all of these pasts and I possess every fact—yet the facts are mine to use as I will and, even using them truthfully, I change them.
- Frank Herbert
Do as she says, you wormfaced, crawling, sand-brained piece of lizard turd!
- Frank Herbert
A world is supported by four things... 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...without a ruler who knows the art of ruling.
- Frank Herbert
I must rule with eye and claw — as the hawk among lesser birds. - Duke Leto Atreides
- Frank Herbert
In politics, the tripod is the most unstable of all structures.
- Frank Herbert
Power bases are very dangerous because they attract people who are truly insane, people who seek power only for the sake of power.
- Frank Herbert
When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.
- Frank Herbert
This is the fallacy of power: ultimately, it is effective only in an absolute, a limited universe. But the basic lesson of our relativistic universe is that things change. Any power must always meet a greater power.
- Frank Herbert
It was a BuSab axiom that all power blocs tended toward aristocratic forms, that the descendants of decision makers dominated the power niches.
- Frank Herbert
A good bureaucracy is the best tool of oppression ever invented.
- Frank Herbert
Law always chooses sides on the basis of enforcement power. Morality and legal niceties have little to do with it when the real question is: Who has the clout? —Bene
- Frank Herbert