Frank Herbert: Quotes about thinking

“My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something cannot emerge from nothing,' he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable 'the truth' can be.”

“What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do without thinking. Things we do without thinking-there’s the real danger.”

“The surest way to keep a secret is to make someone think they already know the answer.”

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”

“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.”

“Caution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding, passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve.”

“Think on it, Chani: the princess will have the name, yet she'll live as less than a concubine - never to know a moment of tenderness from the man to whom she's bound. While we, Chani, we who carry the name of concubine - history will call us wives.”

“You aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgement of your existence.”

“When he wanted, he could radiate charm and sincerity, but I often wonder in these later days if anything about him was as it seemed. I think now he was a man fighting constantly to escape the bars of an invisible cage.”

“Providence and Manifest Destiny are synonyms often invoked to support arguments based on wishful thinking.”