Frank Herbert
FameRank: 6

"Franklin Patrick Herbert, Jr." was an American list of science fiction authors/science fiction writer best known for the novel Dune (novel)/Dune and its five sequels. Though he became famous for science fiction, he was also a newspaper journalist, photographer, Short Story Writers/short story writer, book reviewer, ecological consultant and lecturer.

The Dune universe/Dune saga, set in the distant future and taking place over millennia, deals with complex themes such as human survival and evolution, ecology, and the intersection of religion, politics and power (sociology)/power. Dune itself is the "best-selling science fiction novel of all time" and the series is widely considered to be amongst the classics of the genre.

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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.

There is no escape - we pay for the violence of our ancestors.

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires, seek discipline and find your liberty.

Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.

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?

If wishes were fishes, then we would all cast nets.

Enemies make you stronger, allies make you weaker.

Beaurocracy destroys initiative.

Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. ...The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.

If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.

The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.

All governments eventually lean further and further towards aristocracy.

The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.

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 replaces by vague ritual.

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptable. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.

Blood is thicker than water, but politics are thicker than blood.

The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.

There's no secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves.

Truth is subject to too much analysis.

The difference between sentiment and being sentimental is the following: Sentiment is when a driver swerves out of the way to avoid hitting a rabbit on the road. Being sentimental is when the same driver, when swerving away from the rabbit, hits a pedestrian.

It is a wise man that does know the contented man is never poor, whilst the discontented man is never rich...

To endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe. You cannot hire a wise man or any other intellect to solve it for you. There's no writ of inquest or calling of witness to provide answers. No servant or disciple can dress the wound. You dress it yourself or continue bleeding for all to see.

Absolute power is the power to destroy.

Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife--chopping off what's incomplete and saying: 'Now, it's compete because it's ended here.'

There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man--with human flesh.

Kindness is the beginning of cruelty.

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.

Life cannot find reasons to sustain it, cannot be a source of decent natural regard, unless each of us resolves to breathe such qualities into it.

Peace for any prolonged period of time is impossible. Humans have a natural thirst for chaos and war is the most readily available form of chaos.

The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.

It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.

The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it.

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 wolf within your fences. The packs ranging outside may not even exist.

A human being can stand any amout of pain.

Humans live best when each has his place, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things. Destroy the place and destroy the person.

A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.

Humans live best when each has a place to stand, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things and what he may achieve. Destroy the place and you destroy the person.

Ready comprehension is often a knee-jerk response and the most dangerous form of understanding. It blinks an opaque screen over your ablility to learn. The judgemental precedents of law function that way, littering your path with dead ends. Be warned. Understand nothing. All comprehension is temporary.