Isaac Asimov - Foundation (1951)

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

Isaac Asimov
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
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
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.

Isaac Asimov
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
Only a lie that wasn't ashamed of itself could possibly succeed.

Isaac Asimov
Custom is second nature. Be accustomed to a bald head, sufficiently accustomed, and hair on it would seem monstrous.

Isaac Asimov
If all human beings understood history, they might cease making the same stupid mistakes over and over.

Isaac Asimov
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
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.

Isaac Asimov
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
A fire eater must eat fire even if he has to kindle it himself.

Isaac Asimov
Courtiers don't take wagers against the king's skill. There is the deadly danger of winning.

Isaac Asimov
It's one thing to have guts; it's another to be crazy.

Isaac Asimov
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
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?

Isaac Asimov
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.

Isaac Asimov
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.

Isaac Asimov
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
The most hopelessly stupid man is he who is not aware that he is wise.

Isaac Asimov
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.

Isaac Asimov
I can't bear to hear a human being spoken of with contempt just because of his group identification...It's these respectable people here who create those hooligans out there.

Isaac Asimov
It was childish to feel disappointed, but childishness comes almost as naturally to a man as to a child.

Isaac Asimov
The human mind works at low efficiency. Twenty percent is the figure usually given. When, momentarily, there is a flash of greater power, it is termed a hunch, or insight, or intuition.

Isaac Asimov
Stories grow by accretion. Tales accumulate — like dust. The longer the time lapse, the dustier the history — until it degenerates into fables.
Pelorat said, We historians are familiar with the process, Dom. There is a certain preference for the fable. The falsely dramatic drives out the truly dull.

Isaac Asimov
We abandoned the appearance of power to preserve the essence of it.

Isaac Asimov
Korell is that frequent phenomenon in history: the republic whose ruler has every attribute of the absolute monarch but the name. It therefore enjoyed the usual despotism unrestrained even by those two moderating influences in the legitimate monarchies: regal honor and court etiquette.

Isaac Asimov
It seems an uncommonly woundabout and hopelessly wigmawolish method of getting anywheahs.

Isaac Asimov
That was the time to begin all-out preparations for war.
On the contrary. That was the time to begin all-out prevention of war.

Isaac Asimov