Frank Herbert: Trending quotes

“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.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

People , Learning

“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.”

Frank Herbert book Chapterhouse: Dune

Source: Chapterhouse: Dune

Freedom

“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.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

Sense , Universe

“Equal justice and equal opportunity are ideals we should seek, but we should recognize that humans administer the ideals and that humans do not have equal ability.”

Frank Herbert

Dune Genesis (1980)
Context: In the beginning I was just as ready as anyone to fall into step, to seek out the guilty and to punish the sinners, even to become a leader. Nothing, I felt, would give me more gratification than riding the steed of yellow journalism into crusade, doing the book that would right the old wrongs.
Reevaluation raised haunting questions. I now believe that evolution, or deevolution, never ends short of death, that no society has ever achieved an absolute pinnacle, that all humans are not created equal. In fact, I believe attempts to create some abstract equalization create a morass of injustices that rebound on the equalizers. Equal justice and equal opportunity are ideals we should seek, but we should recognize that humans administer the ideals and that humans do not have equal ability.

Justice

“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?”

Frank Herbert

World , Thinking , Sense , Personality

“Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.”

Frank Herbert

“There is only one true wealth in all the universe--living time.”

Frank Herbert book The Green Brain

The Green Brain (1966)
Context: There is only one true wealth in all the universe. I have given you some of it. I have given your father and your mate some of it. And your friends. This wealth is living time. Time.
Context: "A slave is one who must produce wealth for another," the Brain said. "There is only one true wealth in all the universe. I have given you some of it. I have given your father and your mate some of it. And your friends. This wealth is living time. Time. Are we slaves because we have given you more time to live?"

Universe , Time , Wealth

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

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune