Brian Herbert Quotes

The first step in innovation is to know that a thing can be created. After that, the rest is a matter of detail.

The Universe operates on a basic principle of economics: everything has its
cost. We pay to create our future, we pay for the mistakes of the past. We
pay for every change we make . . . and we pay just as dearly if we refuse to
change.

With few ambitions, most people allowed efficient machines to perform everyday tasks for them. Gradually, humans ceased to think, or dream... or truly live.

Who is truly anyone? Every person is illusion to some degree.

The universe is our picture. Only the immature imagine the cosmos to be what
they think it is.

We are trained to believe and not to know.

How will I be remembered by my children? This is the true measure of a man.

Let pressure pass over and through you. That way you can't be harmed by it.

Any school for free citizens must begin by teaching distrust, not trust. It must teach questioning, not acceptance of stock answers.

The greatest and most important problems of life cannot be solved. They can
only be outgrown.

Even the poorest House can be rich in loyalty. Allegiance that must be purchased by bribes or wages is hollow and flawed, and could break at the worst possible moment. Allegiance that comes from the heart, though, is stronger than adamantium and more valuable than purest melange.

"Some say it is better to rule in hell than serve in heaven. That is a defeatist attitude. I intend to rule everywhere, not just in Hell."
- General Agamemnon
New Memoirs

Just repeating a statement often and with great vehemence does not make it a fact, and no amount of repetition can make a rational person believe it.

"Religion is the emulation of the adult by the child. Religion is the encystment of past beliefs: mythology, which is guesswork, the hidden assumptions of trust in the universe, those pronouncements which men have made in search of personal power . . . all mingled with shreds of enlightenment. And always the ultimate unspoken commandment is "Thou shalt not question!" But we do anyway. We break that commandment as a matter of course. The work to which we have set ourselves is the liberating of the imagination, the harnessing of imagination to humankind's deepest sense of creativity."