Quote

Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept?

Frank Herbert

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Frank Herbert
Age: 65 †
Born: 1920
Born: October 8
Died: 1986
Died: February 11
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Photographer
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Tacoma
Washington
Frank Patrick Herbert
Franklin Patrick Herbert
Franklin Herbert
Franklin Patrick Herbert
Jr.
Littles
Produces
Improvements
Better
Improvement
Heap
Look
Innovation
Bureaucrats
Little
Produce
Enjoys
Looks
Especially
Appearing
Make
Results
Destroys
Always
Enjoy
Bureaucracy
Inept
Hate
Initiative
Routines

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We’ve lost something vital, I tell you. When we lost it, we lost the ability to make good decisions. We fall upon decisions these days the way we fall upon an enemy—or wait and wait, which is a form of giving up, and we allow the decisions of others to move us. Have we forgotten that we were the ones who set this current flowing?
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If you believe certain words, you believe their hidden arguments. When you believe something is right or wrong, true or false, you believe the assumptions in the words which express the arguments. Such assumptions are often full of holes, but remain most precious to the convinced.
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I don’t think it’s quite that simple. Some people never observe anything, Life just happens to them. They get by on little more than a kind of dumb persistence, and they resist with anger and resentment anything that might lift them out of that false serenity.
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If we define Futurism as an exploration beyond accepted limits, then the nature of limiting systems becomes the first object of exploration.
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My lungs taste the air of Time,Blown past falling sands.
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Justice required resort to law and that could be a fickle mistress, subject always to the whims and prejudices of those who administered the laws.
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The most persistent principles in the universe are accident and error.
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Most lives are a flight from selfhood. Most prefer the truths of the stable. You stick your head into the stanchions and munch contentedly until you die. Others use you for their purposes. Not once do you look outside the stable to lift your head and be your own creature.
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The mind can go either direction under stress—toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training.
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A human being can stand any amount of pain.
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The writing of history is largely a process of diversion. Most historical accounts distract attention from the secret influences behind great events.
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Too much knowledge never makes for simple decisions.
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The most important survival ability for any life form is the ability to change.
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To know the future absolutely it to be trapped into that future absolutely. It collapses time. Present becomes future.
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The proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On that path lies danger.
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Historians exercise great power and some of them know it. They recreate the past, changing it to fit their own interpretations. Thus, they change the future as well.
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The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.
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