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Isaac Asimov -
Foundation (1951)
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Human beings are very conservative in some ways and virtually never change numerical conventions once they grow used to them. They even come to mistake them for laws of nature.
Isaac Asimov
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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
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Was there anything more exciting in life than seeking answers?
Isaac Asimov
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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
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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
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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
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A good question is, of course, the key by which infinite answers can be educed.
Isaac Asimov
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Were I to use the wits the good Spirits gave me, he said, then I would say this lady can not exist — for what sane man would hold a dream to be reality. Yet rather would I not be sane and lend belief to charmed, enchanted eyes.
Isaac Asimov
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Anything you make forbidden gains sexual attractiveness. Would you be particularly interested in women's breasts if you lived in a society in which they were displayed at all times?
Isaac Asimov
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In all the known history of Mankind, advances have been made primarily in physical technology; in the capacity of handling the inanimate world about Man. Control of self and society has been left to to chance or to the vague gropings of intuitive ethical systems based on inspiration and emotion. As a result no culture of greater stability than about fifty-five percent has ever existed, and these only as the result of great human misery.
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The appearance of strength is all about you. It would seem to last forever. However... the rotten tree-trunk, until the very moment when the storm-blast breaks it in two, has all the appearance of might it ever had. The storm-blast whistles through the branches of the Empire even now. Listen... and you will hear the creaking.
Isaac Asimov
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Only a lie that wasn't ashamed of itself could possibly succeed.
Isaac Asimov
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Custom is second nature. Be accustomed to a bald head, sufficiently accustomed, and hair on it would seem monstrous.
Isaac Asimov
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If all human beings understood history, they might cease making the same stupid mistakes over and over.
Isaac Asimov
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I consider violence an uneconomical way of attaining an end. There are always better substitutes, though they may sometimes be a little less direct.
Isaac Asimov
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Human beings thought with their hands. It was their hands that were the answer of curiosity, that felt and pinched and turned and lifted and hefted. There were animals that had brains of respectable size, but they had no hands and that made all the difference.
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There's so much knowledge to be had that specialists cling to their specialties as a shield against having to know anything about anything else. They avoid being drowned.
Isaac Asimov
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A fire eater must eat fire even if he has to kindle it himself.
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Courtiers don't take wagers against the king's skill. There is the deadly danger of winning.
Isaac Asimov
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It's one thing to have guts; it's another to be crazy.
Isaac Asimov
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It is the invariable lesson to humanity that distance in time, and in space as well, lends focus. It is not recorded, incidentally, that the lesson has ever been permanently learned.
Isaac Asimov
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If you were to insist I was a robot, you might not consider me capable of love in some mystic human sense, but you would not be able to distinguish my reactions from that which you would call love — so what difference would it make?
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Saying something is 'too bad' is easy. You say you disapprove, which makes you a nice person, and then you can go about your business and not be interested anymore. It's a lot worse than 'too bad.' It's against everything decent and natural.
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Now any dogma, based primarily on faith and emotionalism, is a dangerous weapon to use on others, since it is almost impossible to guarantee that the weapon will never be turned on the user.
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The house was somehow very lonely at night and Dr. Darell found that the fate of the Galaxy made remarkably little difference while his daughter's mad little life was in danger.
Isaac Asimov
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Quote of the day
Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.
Faith Baldwin
Isaac Asimov
Creative Commons
Born:
October 4, 1919
Died:
April 6, 1992
(aged 72)
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