Frank Herbert Government Quotations

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.

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities.

Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class -- whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.

Governments do not know what they cannot do until after they cease to be governments. Each government carries the seeds of its own destruction.

Governments can be useful to the governed only so long as inherent tendencies toward tyranny are restrained.

Good governance never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders.

Governments always commit their entire populations when the demands grow heavy enough. By their passive acceptance, these populations become accessories to whatever is done in their name.

Major flaw in government arise from a fear of making radical internal changes even though a need is clearly seen.

There exists a limit to the force even the most powerful may apply without destroying themselves. Judging this limit is the true artistry of government. Misuse of power is the fatal sin.

Religion, too, is a weapon. What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government?