Frank Herbert Quotes

It becomes pretty crystal clear once you watch that first assembly [movie cut] the things that are just grinding it to a halt, so to speak, or slowing it down, or getting in the way, yeah.

You just can't get anything done. You can't get hearings, you can't get legislation, you can't get responses by the regulatory agencies - you can't get anything done. I'm a realist. I don't work harder and harder to get less and less.

Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress.

You can't achieve anything without getting in someone's way.

Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.

Even if you're not going anywhere, don't get in the way.

When all else fails, complicate matters.

You know you're a fool when what you're doing makes even the post office seem efficient.

[Describing the United Nations:] ... a beehive without honey ... a chaotic and sterile maelstrom

I pass my days in a state of exasperation. First, with the fools who do not want any of the things that ought to be done, and second, with the equally obnoxious fools who insist upon so much that they cannot get anything done.

I have to say to the Government that you are not even getting nowhere fast - you are getting nowhere slowly.

It's so frustrating to be working so hard and know that it's not going anywhere and it doesn't matter.

Routine is supposed to be the great deadener of souls; how much worse is the half-completed task, the broken round, the unfulfilled routine?

To a crazy ship, all winds are contrary.

Disorganization can scarcely fail to result in efficiency.

Like life isn't complicated enough. You should at least be able to follow the signs.

We were lining up and counting off nice and easy till you came stumbling through like a doped-up bull,' Minho responded.

So round and round you go, spinning mental wheels and nowhere finding anyplace to get traction. What the hell...is it?

Experience is a form of paralysis.

People are always ruining things for you.

They weren't moving. Perhaps I was dazzling then with my ineptitude. It had happened before.

It's simple until you make it complicated.

Its [Resistance] aim is to shove us away, distract us from doing our work.

Our life seems cursed to be a wiggle merely, and a wandering without end.

Now, I meant to talk about something else earlier on, and I've forgotten what it was. I've remembered what it is again, but I've also forgotten. And that's really what adult life is like most of the time.