Frank Herbert Quotes

We humans have millions of years of evolutionary baggage that makes us regard competition in a deadly light.

All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature; the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost - the most legitimate - passion nature has bred into us and, without doubt, the most agreeable one.

We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race.

Self-preservation, nature's first great law, all the creatures, except man, doth awe.

When a lion doesn't get its prey, it remains hungry. When the prey saves himself, he has not won, but has saved his life.

Big fish eat little fish.

In accord with Nature’s Laws, nothing is more right than the preservation of one’s own race.

The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and the eaten. The law was: EAT OR BE EATEN. He did not formulate the law in clear, set terms and moralize about it. He did not even think the law; he merely lived the law without thinking about it at all.

Man selects only for his own good: Nature only for that of the being which she tends.

Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.

Unlike your fish tank, in nature, fish eat each other. When the population of a species gets too low, it will die out.

Throw me to the wolves. I learn faster when I'm around wolves and sharks.

I kind of focus on my own stuff, really, and then when people come into my territory, I've got to fight them away, and that's what we do every time fight night happens.

That's the food chain that cricket is sometimes. You have to be at the top of it otherwise you get swept away and eaten up.

The trouble is, the same thing that enabled us to survive evolution is also going to kill us, because in the final analysis, if survival is the primary motivation of every human being, then we will finally be in a situation where might will make right and only one person will survive.

The strong were always eating the weak.

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.

stinginess seemed instinctive to him. Darwinian even. He hadn't gotten to his current size by sharing.

A stronger race will drive out the weaker ones, for the vital urge in its ultimate form will break down the absurd barriers of the so called humanity of individuals to make way for the humanity of nature which destroys the weak to give their place to the strong.

Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time.

Weak dogs become bones for other, stronger dogs.

We have become too civilized to grasp the obvious. For the truth is very simple. To survive you often have to fight, and to fight you have to dirty yourself. War is evil, and it is often the lesser evil. Those who take the sword perish by the sword, and those who don't take the sword perish by smelly diseases.

Survival," I said softly. "It's selfish, and it's dark, and we've always been a species willing to do anything to satisfy our needs. Individuals have morals. Mobs have appetites.

Lonely's like any other organism; competitive and resourceful in the struggle to perpetuate itself.

We are in a survival mentality, and that's hard-wired into our humanity, because we are the winners of an evolutionary struggle of millions and millions and millions of years.