Frank Herbert Quotes
Fire has no definite form, but clings to the burning object. The body, Li, stands for nature in its radiance. What is dark clings to what is light. A luminous thing must have within itself something that perseveres: fuel. Everything that gives light is dependent on something to which it clings in order that it may continue to shine. The less we know, the longer the explanation. Any training school for free citizens must begin by teaching distrust, not trust. It must teach questioning, not acceptance of stock answers. The unconscious mind (like the body) is a storehouse of relics and memories out of the past. There's nothing mystical about it. The brain has been built up in the course of millions of years and represents a history of which it is the result; it carries the traces of that history exactly as the body carries such traces (the appendix, thymus, gill structure in the embryo, etc.). When you grope into the basic structure of the mind, you find these traces of the archaic mind. The half-alive demand what is missing in them . . . but deny it when it is presented to them because they fear the proof of their own insufficiency. You cannot understand a process by stopping it The fundamental rule of the universe is that there is no neutrality, no pure objectivity, no absolute truth which is divorced from the pragmatic lessons gained in application. The old scientists hid their own prejudices behind a facade of objectivity and purity of search. The senses of any creature, no matter how sophisticated and sensitive and intelligent, ingite internal responses to surrounding rhythms. The matter of speed in a technological culture may be taken as an attempt to go faster into the future, rushing to make known the unknown. The logic which is sound for a finite system is not necessarily sound for an infinite universe. The cultural borrowings and interminglings which have brought us to this present moment cover such vast distances and enormous span of time that they present us with an awesome panoply from which we can derive only a sense of great movement and powerful currents. A wise man depends upon his friends for information and upon himself for decisions. When you feel the pressures of limitations, then you begin to die . . . and you die in a prison of your own choosing. INTUITION: A function by which we see around corners. People who live exposed to dangerous natural conditions use intuition to a great extent. A requirement of creativity is that it contributes to change. Creativity keeps the creator alive. Presumably, we are dreaming all the time, but we do not see these dreams during the day because consciousness (like the sun obscuring stars during the day) is much too brilliant to allow the unconscious content that much definition. Simplicity is the most difficult of all things. We depend entirely upon the benevolent cooperation of the unconscious. The unconscious, in a sense, invents the next moment for us. When someone asks you if you are starting a new cult, do what I do, run like hell! The massive steadiness of Time's movement is everywhere complicated by shifting currents, waves, surges and countersurges like a surf against rocky cliffs. There is much of ruin in everyday life. We ought to see beyond the wreckage to the magnificence that once was. And night is a hole in yesterday, a tunnel into tomorrow. Is the subject or the observer the greater influence? Greed, anger, and ignorance poison life. An old Fremen drunk on spice liquor said, "I reminded him of his manhood and told him to go find it someplace else." Time depends on where you are standing and on how and where you are looking. The mind imposes an arbitrary framework called "reality," which is quite independent of what the senses report. The universe is a playground of improvisation it follows no eternal pattern. Science: The creation of dilemmas by the solution of mysteries. Talk: The theory that you can get somewhere if you keep putting one word in front of another. The answer is a mirror of the question. Conflict perpetuated over a long period tends to be self-perpetuating and can easily plunge beyond control. Learn from the past—don't wear it around your neck. Evolution never ends short of death. No society is a pinnacle. All men are not created equal, and that is the root of many social problems. ' Systematic' is a dangerous word, a dangerous concept. Systems originate with their human creators. Systems take over. Most traditional governments divide people, setting them against each other to weaken the society and make it governable. We have an appetite to encompass everything. Any human being is a time machine. back to top
There are problems in this universe for which there are no answers. Here lies a toppled god, His fall was not a small one. We did but build his pedestal, a narrow and a tall one. A storm is coming - our storm. And when it comes it will shake the universe. There is probably no more terrible instant of realization than the one in which you discover your father is a man - with human flesh. 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 exists no separation between gods and men; one blends softly casual into the other. 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 vagure ritual. Truth suffers from too much analysis. Thou didst divide the sand by thy strenght; thou breakest the heads of the dragons in the desert. Yea, I behold thee as a beast coming up from the dunes; thou hast the two horns of the lamb, but thou speakest as the dragon. He (Muad'dib) Told you that completion equals death! Absolute prediction is completion . . . is death! This is the fallacy of power: ultimately it is effective only in an absoulute universe. But the basic lesson of our relativeistic universe is that things change. Any power must always meet a greater power. Paul Muad'Dib taught this lesson to the Sardaukar on the Plains of Arrakeen. His descendants have yet to learn the lesson for themselves. 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 is gone past me I will turn to see fear's path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. Uproot your questions from their ground and the dangling roots will be seen. More questions! Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know. Answers are a perilous grip on the universe. They can appear sensible yet explain nothing. Paired opposites define your longings and those longings imprison you. The true warrior often understands his enemy better than he understands his friends. A dangerous pitfall if you let understanding lead to sympathy as it will naturally do when left unguided. What do Holy Accidents teach? Be resilient. Be strong. Be ready for change, for the new. Gather many experiences and judge them by the steadfast nature of our faith. Many things we do naturally become difficult only when we try to make them intellectual subjects. It is possible to know so much about a subject that you become ignorant. 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. The one-eyed view of our universe says you must not look far afield for problems. Such problems may never arrive. Instead, tend to the wold within your fences. The packs ranging outside may not even exist. To know a thing well, know its limits. Only when pushed beyond its tolerances will true nature be seen. Kralizec: the typhoon struggle, the battle at the end of the universe
Arafel: The cloud darkness at the end of the universe
Do not be traped by the need to achive anything. This way, you achive everything. A popular man arouses the jealousy of the powerful. A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it. If wishes were fishes we'd all cast nets. Polish comes from the cities; wisdom from the desert. Think you 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? They shall come all for violence: their faces shall sup up as the east wind, and they shall gather the captivity of the sand. And the water which thou takest out of the river shall become blood upon the dry land. Behold as a wild ass in the desert, go I forth to my work. For they shall suck of the abundance of the seas and of the treasure hid in the sand. I have been a stranger in a strange land. I shall go unto the rebellious that dwell in the dry land. The gift is a blessing of the river. Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife-chopping off what's incomplete and saying: "now, it's complete because it's ended here." The mind goes on working no matter how we try to hold it back A time to get and time to lose; a time to keep and a time to cast away; a time for love and a time for hate; a time of war and a time of peace. Be prepared to appreciate what you meet. The mind can go either dirrection 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. If you rely only on your eyes, your other senses weaken. Law is the ultimate science
Better a dry morsel and quietness therewith than a house full of sacrifice and strife. And I will make the rivers dry, and sell the land into the hand of the wicked: and I will make the land waste and all that is therein, by the hand of strangers. A stone is heavy and the sand is weighty; but a fool's wrath is heavier than both. Paradice on my right, Hell on my left and the Angel of Death behind. Survival is the ability to swim in strange water. Do not count a human dead untill you've seen his body. And even then you can make a mistake. When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders belive nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong-faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late. All men beneath your position covet your station. Prophets have a way of dying by violence. How little the universe knows about the nature of real cruelty! And the victory that day was turned into mourning unto all the people: for the people heard say that day how the king was grieved for his son. I'm going to rub your faces in the things you try to avoid. I don't find it strange that all you want to believe is only that which comforts you. How else do humans invent the traps which betray us into mediocrity? How else do we define cowardice? You aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgment of your existence. If you would possess your humanity, let go of the universe! Most lives are a flight from selfhood. Most prefer the truths of the stable. You stick your heads into the stanchions and much contentedly until you die. Others use you for their purposes. Not once do you live outside the stable to life your head and be your own creature. In human affairs, nothing remains enduring; all human affairs revolve in a helix, moving around and out. To use raw power is to make yourself infinitely valnerable to greater powers The cleansed mind makes decisions in the presence of unknowns and without cause and effect. The wise man molds himself-the fool lives only to die. I told him that to endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe. Men cannot separate means and enlightenment. Can you collect chaos? We Zunsunni say: "not collecting, that is the ultimate gathering!" Kralizec, the typhoon struggle, lives in our hearts. Most deadly errors arise from obsolete assumptions. To suspect your own mortality is to know the beginning of terror; to learn irrefutably that you are mortal is to know the end of terror. All proofs inevitably lead to propositions which have no proof! All things are known because we want to believe in them. Coan-Teen: The female death-spirit who walks without feet
When God hath ordained a creature to die in a particular place, He causeth that creature's wants to direct him to that place. I was baptized in sand and it cost me the knack of believing. Who trades in faiths anymore? Who'll buy? Who'll sell? Never to forgive-never to forget. That there is nothing firm, nothing balanced, nothing durable in all the universe- That nothing remains in its state, that each day, sometimes each hour, brings change. Surely, we have put on their necks fetters up to the chin, so their heads are raised; and we have put before them a barrier and behind them a barrier; and we have covered them, so they do not see. The haughty do but build castle walls behind which they try to hide their doubts and fears. Leaving the ladder, one may fall upward! The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth. Just as individuals are born, mature, breed, and die, so do societies and civilizations and governments. If you focus your awareness only upon your own rightness, then you invite the forces of opposition to overwhelm you. This is a common error. One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp too strongly is to be taken over by power, and thus to become its victim. Each planet has its own period, and each life likewise. Pain is a function of nerves, pain comes as light comes to the eyes. Effort comes from the muscles, not from nerves. The absence says more than the presence when it comes to desert survival. There's unknowns all around at every moment. That's where you seek knowledge. Are you aware, that the hula preserves an ancient sign language which once belonged only to males? You've never heard of the hula? Of course. Who dances it anymore? Dancers have preserved many things, though. The translations have been lost, but I know them. The Problem with leadership is inevitably: Who will play God? Are these the meek who will outwait us all and inherit the universe? Kanawa: the iron ring of jealousy
You should never be in the company of anyone with whom you would not want to die. Madness in method, that is genius. Only fools prefer the past! If you want immortality, then deny form. Whatever has form has mortality. Beyond form is the formless, the immortal. Arafel: The cloud-darkness of holy judgment.
Arafel: The cloud darkness at the end of the universe.
Arafel: The Tyrant's holy judgment.
Spannungsbogen: the span of the bow! (how far back you draw the bow before releasing your arrow)
Has not religion claimed a patent on creation for all of these millennia? "MY WORDS ARE YOUR PAST, MY QUESTIONS ARE SIMPLE: WITH WHOM DO YOU ALLY?" Memory never recaptures reality. Memory reconstructs. All reconstructions change the original, becoming external frames of reference that inevitably fall short. back to top
Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind. One observes the survivors, and learns from them. The populace must think their ruler is a greater man than they, else why should they follow him? Above all a leader must be a showman, giving his people the bread and circuses they require. Four things cannot be hidden-love, smoke, a pillar of fire, and a man striding across the open bled. There are weapons you cannot hold in your hands. You can only hold them in your mind. The basic rule is this: Never support weakness; always support strength. It's easier to be terrified by an enemy you admire. Many invention have selectively improved particular skills or abilities, emphasizing one aspect or another. But no achievement has ever scratched the complexity or adaptability of the human mind. Blindness can take many forms other than the inability to see. Fanatics are often blinded in their thoughs. Leaders are often blinded in their hearts. History allows us to see the obvious-but unfortunately, not until it is too late. Like the knowlege of your own being, the sietch forms a firm base from which you move out into the world and into the universe. Like many culinary delicacies, revenge is a dish best savored slowly, after long and delicate preparations. Only God can make living, sentient creatures. Without a goal, a life is nothing. Sometimes the goal becomes a man's entire life, an all-consuming passion. But once that goal is achieved, what then? Oh, poor man, what then? History has seldom been good to those who must be punished. Bene Gesserit punishments cannot be forgotten. How simple things were when our Messiah was only a dream. The Haughty do but build castle walls behind which they seek to hide their doubts and fears. Any path that narrows future possibilities may become a lethal trap. Humans do not thread their way though a maze; they scan a vast horizon filled with unique opportunities. Perceptions rule the universe. You of fearful heart, be strong and fear not. Behold, your God will come with a vengeance; He will come and save you from the worshipers of machines. Man is but a pebble dropped in a pool. And if man is but a pebble, then all his work can be no more. Speak the truth. That is always much easier, and is often the most powerful argument. One who rules assumes irrevocable responsiblity for the ruled. You are a husbandman. This demands, at times, a selfless act of love which may be amusing only to those you rule. The ultimate question: Why does life exist? The surest way to keep a secret is to make people belive they already know the answer. Hatred is as dangerous an emotion as love. The capacity for either one is the capacity for its opposite. I must rule with eye and claw-as the hawk among lesser birds. Memory and History are two sides of the same coin. In time, however, History tends to slant itself toward a favorable impresion of events, while Memory is doomed to preserve the worst aspect. When the center of the storm does not move, you are in its path. Storm beget Storms. Rage begets rage. Revenge begets revenge. War beget wars. Truth is a chameleon. The worst sort of protection is confidence. The best defense is suspicion. When faced with necessary actions, there are always choices. So long as the job gets done. In plotting any course of revenge, one must savor the anticipation phase and all its moments, for the actual execution often differs widely from the original plan. All persons are contained within a single individual, just as all time is in a moment, and the entire universe is in a grain of sand. The universe contains untapped and heretofore unimagined energy sources. They are before your very eyes, yet you cannot see them. They are in your mind, yet you cannot think them. But I can! Only fools leave witnesses. Progress and profit require a substantial investment in personnel, equipment, and caital funding. However, the resource motst often overlooked, yet which can often provide the greatest payoff, is an investment in time. back to top
Justice belongs to those who claim it, but let the claimant beware lest he create new injustice by his claim and thus set the bloody pendulum of revenge into its inexorable motion. All sentient beings are created unqual. The best society provides each with equal oportunity to float at his own level. No matter how painful, life must adapt or die. To believe that you are free is more important than being free No species is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its own interests Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed. When the means of great violence are widespread, nothing is more dangerous to the powerful than that they create outrage and injustice, for outrage and injustice will certainly ignite retaliation in kind. The attack by those who want to die-this is the attack against which you cannot prepare a perfect defense. The more control, the more that requires control. This is the road to chaos. Question: who governs the governors? Guven the proper leverage at the proper point, any sentient awareness may be exploded into astonishing self-understanding. There are some forms of insanity which, dirven to an ultimate expression, can become the new models of sanity. Where pain predominates, agony can be a valued teacher. There is no such thing as pure objectivity. Where is the weapon with which I enforce your bondage? You give it to me every time you open your mouth. All the wisdom of the universe cannot match the alert willingness to dodge a violent blow. If your words are a symbols of reality , you live in a dream world.
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- Mundial Axiom from Direct Descent by Frank Herbert
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- Frank Herbert, unpublished notes
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Dune Quotes by Frank Herber
- Pual Muad'Dib
- Tleilaxu Epigram
- Paul Muad'Dib
- Muad'Dib
- Gurney Halleck
- Proverbs of Muad'dib
- Words of Muad'dib by Irulan
- Ancient Fremen Saying
- Revised OC bible Arran II:4
- The Preacher of Arrakeen
- The Preacher
- Litany against Fear
- Mentat Zensufi
- Zensunni koan
- The Zensunni Whip
- The Zensunni Whip
- Miles Teg
- Tleilaxu Doctrine
- Mentat Text Two (decto)
- Words of an ancient philosopher (Attributed by Harq al-Ada to one Louis Veuillot)
- The Azhar Book; Shamra I:4
- The Amtal Rule
- Hayt quoting some Zensunni
- Thufir Hawat
- First Law of Mentat
- Gurney Halleck
- saying from locals of Arakeen
- Orange Catholic bible
- Gurney Halleck
- Gurney Halleck
- Gurney Halleck
- Gurney Halleck
- Gurney quoting the Orange Catholic Bible
- Gurney
- Paul Atreides quoting the Orange Catholic Bible
- "Collected sayings of Muad'Dib" by Princess Irulan
- Lady Jessica Atreides
- The Orange Catholic bible
- Shai-hulud, Old Father Eternity
- Bene Gesserit axiom
- Bene Gesserit axiom
- Gurney
- Gurney
- Esmar Tuek
- Orange Catholic Bible
- Bene Gesserit axiom
- Bene Gesserit
- Bene Gesserit proverb
- Bene Gesserit
- Bene Gesserit saying
- Paul Muad'Dib
- Gurney
- The Preacher saying Maud'Dib's words
- The Preacher
- The Preacher
- The Preacher
- Bene Gesserit maxim.
- Bene Gesserit axiom
- Hayt using a Zensunni Saying
- Zensunni parable
- Hayt refering to Maud'Dib
- Hayt
- Hayt
- Muriz
- Lady Jessica quoting Bene Gesserit
- Bene Gesserit
- Bene Gesserit manuals
- Ghadhean al-Fali
- Paul Muad'Dib
- Fremen Maxim
- Bijaz quoting Bene Gesserit
- Stilgar quoting Fremen religion
- Bene Gesserit axoim
- Choda's admonition to the Zensunni
- Bene Gesserit precept
- Paul Muad'Dib
- Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam
- Duke Leto I
- Bene Gesserit
- Mentat Lession
- Fremen sence of caution
- Paul Muad'Dib
- Leto II
- Maud'Dib, from the Oral History
- Duncan Idaho upon remembering a Orange Catholic Bible passage.
- Fremen Saying
- Leto II
- Leto II
- Oral History (posibly Leto II)
- The tleilaxu Question from Muad'dib speaks.
- The God Emperor
- Mentat Handbook
Dune: House Atreides by Brian Herbert
- Cheif commandment resulting from the Butlerian Jihad, found in the Orange Catholic Bible
- Bene Gesserit Teaching
- Duke Paulus Atreides
- Freman Wisdom
- Bene Gesserit Teaching
- The Bene Gesserit Azhar Book, Compilation of Great Secrets
- Thufir Hawat
- Ikbhan's Treatise on the Mind, Volume II
- The Orange Catholic Bible
- Prince Raphael Corrino
- Freman Teaching
- Emeror Elrood IX
- The Orange Catholic Bible
- Lady Helena Atreides
- Bene Gesserit Dictum
- Stilgar, Niaib of Sietch Tabr
- Bene Gesserit Axiom
- The Spacing Guild Handbook
- Bene Gesserit Saying
- The Orange Catholic Bible
- Zensunni Saying
- Bene Gesserit Axiom
- Duke Paulus Atreides
The ansewr: For life's sake.
- Anonymous, thought to be of Zensunni origin
- Ancient Freman Wisdom
- Bene Gesserit Archives, Wallach IX
- Duke Paulus Atreides
- Lady Helena Atreides
- Ancient Freman Wisdom
- Bene Gesserit Conundrum
- Zensunni Aphorism
- Hasimir Fenring
- Count Hasimir Fenring
- Hasimir Fenring
- Freman Saying
- Tio Holtzman
- Hasimir Fenring
- Dominic Vernius
Dosadi Experiement & Whipping Star by Frank Herbert
- Gowachin aphorism
- The Gowachin Primary
- Dry Head Teacher
- Gowachin aphorism
- Gowachin Maxim
- Attributed to an ancient Human journalist
- BuSab Manual
- Human Aphorism
- PanSpechi aphorism
Answer: Entropy
- Gowachin riddle
- from an ancient Human mystic
- BuSab Manual
- Dosadi aphorism
- Gowachin Aphorism
- Laclac Riddle
- Ancient folk saying
- Wreave Saying