"Why, he wondered, did so many people spend their lives not trying to find answers to questions—not even thinking of questions to begin with? Was there anything more exciting in life than seeking answers?"

"Does said, “You’re not a…a believer?” “I’m a scholar,” said Mycelium with obvious pride."

"The cure for advanced gullibility is to go to sleep and consider matters again the next day."

"I don’t want to believe it just because I want to believe it."

"But it seemed so likely to him that on every world the earliest histories were medleys of self-serving heroisms and minidramas that were meant as morality plays and were not to be taken literally. It was surely true of Helicon, yet you would find scarcely a Heliconian who would not swear by all the tales told and insist it was all true history."

"I have always dealt with economic forces, rather than philosophic forces, but you can’t split history into neat little nonoverlapping divisions. For instance, religions tend to accumulate wealth when successful and that eventually tends to distort the economic development of a society."

"There is too much history and there is too little of it that is told."

"Apparently, mathematics and the martial arts are not necessarily mutually exclusive."

"It’s a dull world, full of farms and with lots of cattle, both four-legged and two-legged."

"“As for status, that’s the sort of push and pull I’d just as soon avoid. I’ve seen many people with status, but I’m still looking for a happy one. Status won’t sit still under you; you have to continually fight to keep from sinking."

"“My field of specialization is the mathematical analysis of social structure.” “Sounds horrible.”"

"“It is absolutely forbidden for the Imperial government to exercise any security control over the University or its members. There is complete freedom. Anything can be discussed here, anything can be said here.” “What about violent crime?” “Then the University authorities themselves handle it, with reason and care—and there are virtually no crimes of violence. The students and faculty appreciate their freedom and understand its terms. Too much rowdiness, the beginning of riot and bloodshed, and the government may feel it has the right to break the unwritten agreement and send in the troops. No one wants that, not even the government, so a delicate balance is maintained.”"

"“But it’s been quiet under Cleon. And we’ve had fifty years of peace.” “Yes, but soldiers who are well-paid would resent having that pay reduced just because there is peace. Admirals resist mothballing ships and having themselves reduced in rank simply because there is less for them to do. So the credits still go—unproductively—to the armed forces and vital areas of the social good are allowed to deteriorate. That’s what I call decay. Don’t you?”"

"We might not be able to give out the news for security reasons—that’s the excuse they always advance for hiding bad news—but I would know."

"Walking is still the best form of short-distance transportation. It’s the most convenient, the cheapest, and the most healthful, Countless years of technological advance have not changed that."

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

"All history shows that we do not learn from the lessons of the past."

"Yet even mathematicians must be young to begin with."

"The robot has wanted Fallom all along, Janov."

"Now the plan was threatend by something more serious than the Mule had ever been. It was to be diverted from a renewal of Empire to something utterly different from anything in history - Galaxia. And he himself had agreed to that. But why? Was there a flaw in the plan? a basic flaw? For one flashing moment, it seemed to Trevize that this flaw did indeed exist and that he knew what it was, that he had known what it was when he made his decision - but the knowledge...if that were what it was...vanished as fast as it came, and left him with nothing."

"Old memories - really old - are almost all in the mountain roots where it takes time to dig them out."

"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?"

"We abandoned the appearance of power to preserve the essence of it."

"It is better to go to defeat with free will than to live in a meaningless security as a cog in a machine."

"It was easy to cover up ignorance by the mystical word “intuition.”"

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

"“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.”"

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

"“Is not all this an extraordinary concatenation of coincidence?” Pelorat said, “If you list it like that—” “List it any way you please,” said Trevize. “I don’t believe in extraordinary concatenations of coincidence.”"

"Once you get it into your head that somebody is controlling events, you can interpret everything in that light and find no reasonable certainty anywhere."

"Pelorat sighed. “I will never understand people.” “There’s nothing to it. All you have to do is take a close look at yourself and you will understand everyone else. We’re in no way different ourselves... You show me someone who can’t understand people and I’ll show you someone who has built up a false image of himself.”"

"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."

"It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy."

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

"To us, all life is a series of accidents to be met with improvisations. To them, all life is purposive and should be met with precalculation."

"The spell of power never quite releases its hold."

"No matter how the conomy and sociology of the neighbouring sectors of the Galaxy changes, there was always an elite; and it is always the characteristic of an elite that it possesses leisure as the great reward of its elite-hood."

"Remarkable what a fragile flower romance is. A gun with a nervous operator behind it can spoil the whole thing."

"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."

"One should cultivate an innocence, an awareness of self, and an unselfconsciousness of self which leaves one nothing to hide."

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

"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."

"Your emotions are, of course, only the children of your background and are not to be condemned - merely changed."

"He never created a finished product. Finished products are for decadent minds."

"Secrecy as deep as this is past possibility without nonexistence as well."

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

"“When the twenty-seven independent Trading Worlds, united only by their distrust of mother planet of the Foundation, concert an assembly among themselves, and each is big with a pride grown of its smallness, hardened by its own insularity and embittered by eternal danger — there are preliminary negotiations to be overcome of a pettiness sufficiently staggering to heart-sicken the most persevering.”"

"“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.”"