"To be a god can ultimately become boring and degrading. There'd be reason enough for the invention of free will! A god might wish to escape into sleep...

Irreverence is a most necessary ingredient of religion. Not to speak of its importance in philosophy. Irreverence is the only way left to us for testing our universe.
~ Frank Herbert ~












Irreverence is a most necessary ingredient of religion. Not to speak of its importance in philosophy...
Show MoreMore Frank Herbert quotes
"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the co...
"I realize that humans cannot bear very much reality. Most lives are a flight from selfhood. Most prefer the truths of the stable. You stick your heads...
"I come only to ask a simple question. Is Muad'Dib's death to be followed by the moral suicide of all men? Is that the inevitable aftermath of a Messia...
"Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as...
"I'm going to rub your faces in 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...
"When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong - faster and fa...
"There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.
"The Fremen have a simple, practical religion,” he said.“Nothing about religion is simple.
"Whether a thought is spoken or not it is a real thing and it has power," Tuek said. "You might find the line between life and death among the Fremen t...
"Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is the task of Religion to fit man into this lawfulness.
"Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, 'I am not the kind of person I want to be.' It must never sink into an assemblage of ...
"But it's well known that repression makes a religion flourish.
"Religion, too, is a weapon. What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government?
"They are not mad. They're trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.