Isaac Asimov - Foundation (1951)

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The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of physics, and if the probabilities of error are greater, it is only because history does not deal with as many humans as physics does atoms, so that individual variations count for more.

Isaac Asimov
Speech, originally, was the device whereby Man learned, imperfectly, to transmit the thoughts and emotions of his mind. By setting up arbitrary sounds and combinations of sounds to represent certain mental nuances, he developed a method of communication--but one which in its clumsiness and thick-thumbed inadequacy degenerated all the delicacy of the mind into gross and guttural signaling.

Isaac Asimov
Any fool can tell a crisis when it arrives. The real service to the state is to detect it in embryo.

Isaac Asimov
The closer to the truth, the better the lie, and the truth itself, when it can be used, is the best lie.

Isaac Asimov
Was there anything more exciting in life than seeking answers?

Isaac Asimov
There is no one so insufferable as a person who gives no other excuse for a peculiar action than saying he had been directed to it in a dream.

Isaac Asimov
To any who know the star field well from one certain reference point, stars are as individual as people. Jump ten parsecs, however, and not even your own sun is recognizable.

Isaac Asimov
The tyranny that now exists is actual. That which may exist in the future is potential. If we are always to draw back from change with the thought that the change may be for the worse, then there is no hope at all of ever escaping injustice.

Isaac Asimov
A good question is, of course, the key by which infinite answers can be educed.

Isaac Asimov
I'm saying suppose. In mathematics, we say "suppose" all the time and see if we can end up with something patently untrue or self-contradictory.

Isaac Asimov
We mythologists know very well that myths and legends contain borrowings, moral lessons, nature cycles, and a hundred other distorting influences, and we labor to cut them away and get to what might be a kernel of truth. In fact, these same techniques must be applied to the most sober histories, for no one writes the clear and apparent truth-if such a thing can even be said to exist.

Isaac Asimov
If we only obey those rules that we think are just and reasonable, then no rule will stand, for there is no rule that some will not think is unjust and unreasonable.

Isaac Asimov
Speech as known to us was unnecessary. A fragment of a sentence amounted almost to a long-winded redundancy. A gesture, a grunt, the curve of a facial line--even a significantly timed pause yielded informational juice.

Isaac Asimov
Every human being lived behind an impenetrable wall of choking mist within which no other but he existed. Occasionally there were the dim signals from deep within the cavern in which another man was located — so that each might grope toward the other. Yet because they did not know one another, and could not understand one another, and dared not trust one another, and felt from infancy the terrors and insecurity of that ultimate isolation — there was the hunted fear of man for man, the savage rapacity of man toward man.

Isaac Asimov
To him, a stilted geometric love of arrangement was system, an indefatigable and feverish interest in the pettiest facets of day-today bureaucracy was industry, indecision when right was caution, and blind stubbornness when wrong, determination.

Isaac Asimov
You don't need to predict the future. Just choose a future -- a good future, a useful future -- and make the kind of prediction that will alter human emotions and reactions in such a way that the future you predicted will be brought about. Better to make a good future than predict a bad one.

Isaac Asimov
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.

Isaac Asimov
At odd and unpredictable times, we cling in fright to the past.

Isaac Asimov
He believes in that mummery a good deal less than I do, and I don't believe in it at all.

Isaac Asimov
Well, then, arrest him. You can accuse him of something or other afterward.

Isaac Asimov
An atom blaster is a good weapon, but it can point both ways.

Isaac Asimov
Secrecy as deep as this is past possibility without nonexistence as well.

Isaac Asimov
Societies create their own history and tend to wipe out lowly beginnings, either by forgetting them or inventing totally fictitious heroic rescues.

Isaac Asimov
There's something about a pious man such as he. He will cheerfully cut your throat if it suits him, but he will hesitate to endanger the welfare of your immaterial and problematical soul.

Isaac Asimov
Mathematicians deal with large numbers sometimes, but never in their income.

Isaac Asimov
Society is much more easily soothed than one's own conscience.

Isaac Asimov
It is well-known that the friend of a conqueror is but the last victim.

Isaac Asimov
It was easy to cover up ignorance by the mystical word intuition.

Isaac Asimov
The whole business is the crudest sort of stratagem, since we have no way of foreseeing it to the end. It is a mere paying out of rope on the chance that somewhere along the length of it will be a noose.

Isaac Asimov
If there is a misuse of power, it is on her part. My crime is that I have never labored to make myself popular — I admit that much — and I have paid too little attention to fools who are old enough to be senile but young enough to have power.

Isaac Asimov