Isaac Asimov

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"“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.”"

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

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

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

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

"At the slightest stress, human beings seemed to divide themselves into antagonistic groups."

"You can always put something noble in a sneering fashion if you try."

"It is not important what can or cannot be done. What is important is what people will or will not believe can be done."

"You’re naïve Hari. Or not a historian, which is the same thing."

"Seldon found himself raging at the passage of time."

"For ten years the Galactic Empire had been without an Emperor, but there was no indication of that fact in the way the Imperial Palace grounds were operated. Millennia of custom made the absence of an Emperor meaningless."

"This - this - was my life's work. My past - humanity's future. Foundation. So beatiful. So alive. And nothing can...Dors!"

"Confidence is rewarded, apparently. There was a homewhen proverb that went, "Grip the nettle firmly and it will become a stick with which to beat your enemy.""

"Don't finish, Pete. I've heard it all before. All I have to do is decipher the thinking of a non-human intelligence." "A better-than-human intelligence. Those creatures from the para-Universe are trying to make themselves understood." "That may be," sighed Bronowski, "but they're trying to do it through my intelligence, which is better than human I sometimes think, but not much. Sometimes, in the dark of the night, I lie awake and wonder if different intelligences can communicate at all; or, if I've had a particularly bad day, whether the phrase 'different intelligences' has meaning at all." "It does," said Lamont savagely, his hands clearly bailing into fists within his lab coat pockets. "It means Hallam and me. It means that fool-hero, Dr. Frederick Hallam and me. We're different intelligences because when I talk to him he doesn't understand. His idiot face gets redder and his eyes bulge and his ears block. I'd say his mind stops functioning, but lack the proof of any other state from which it might stop."

"“It is a mistake,” he said, “to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century.”"

"Tritt listened placidly, clearly understanding nothing, but content to be listening; while Odeen, transmitting nothing, was as clearly content to be lecturing."

"I don't like anything that's got to be. I want to know why."

"The easiest way to solve a problem is to deny it exists."

"You know that prudery is only the other side of prurience. The words are even on the same page in the dictionary."

"If an interaction is too weak to be detectable or to exert influence in any way, then by any operational definition, it doesn't exist."

"There are no happy endings in history, only crisis points that pass."

"Daneel rose. He was alone - and with a Galaxy to care for."

"An unpleasant nest of nasty, materialistic and aggressive people, careless of the rights of others, imperfectly democratic at home though quick to see the minor slaveries of others, and greedy without end."

"A robot, the man had said, is logical but not reasonable."

"Civilizations have always been pyramidal in structure. As one climbs toward the apex of the social edifice, there is increased leisure and increasing opportunity to pursue happiness. As one climbs, one finds also fewer and fewer people to enjoy this more and more. Invariably, there is a preponderance of the dispossessed. And remember this, no matter how well off the bottom layers of the pyramid might be on an absolute scale, they are always dispossessed in comparison with the apex. So there is always social friction in ordinary human societies. The action of social revolution and the reaction of guarding against such revolution or combating it once it has begun are the causes of a great deal of the human misery with which history is permeated."

"“Is that important?” “Everything is important till proven otherwise.”"

"Genes aren’t everything. Environment counts too, and environment can bend into actual psychosis where genes indicate only a potentiality for a particular psychosis."

"Anything could be found in figures if the search were long enough and hard enough and if the proper pieces of information were ignored or overlooked."

"Victories over ingrained patterns of thought are not won in a day or a year."

"The same man who could not find it in his conscience to curb his curiosity into the nuclear studies that might someday kill half of Earth would risk his life to save that of an unimportant fellow man."

"To the rest of the Galaxy, if they are aware of us at all, Earth is but a pebble in the sky. To us it is home, and all the home we know."

"There can never be a man so lost as one who is lost in the vast and intricate corrdiors of his own lonely mind, where none may reach and none may save. There never was a man so helpless as one who cannot remember."

"There was no denying that he would always be conscious of the fact that an Earthman was an Earthman. He couldn’t help that. That was the result of a childhood immersed in an atmosphere of bigotry so complete that it was almost invisible, so entire that you accepted its axioms as second nature. Then you left it and saw it for what it was when you looked back."

"Nonsense. You are a military man and should know better. If there is one science into which man has probed continuously and successfully, it is that of military technology. No potential weapon would remain unrealized for ten thousand years."

"“That’s an amusing thought, if you’ll consider it.” “Do you find everything amusing?” “Why not? As an attitude toward life, it’s an amusing one. It’s the only adjective that will fit. Observe the universe, young man. If you can’t force amusement out of it, you might as well cut your throat, since there’s damn little good in it.”"

"Gillbret said, “Statistics show that one out of three stars has a planetary system.” Biron nodded. It was a well-worn statistic. Every child was taught that in elementary Galactography."

"I see your vile implication. My only explanation for it is that you are criminally insane."

"Trantor could win even such a war, but perhaps not without paying a price that would make victory only a pleasanter name for defeat."

"First, there must be an end to war and national rivalry and only then could one turn to the internal miseries that, after all, had external conflict as their chief cause."

"No one is so modest as not to believe himself a competent amateur sleuth."

"“You make interstellar politics sound a very dirty game.” “It is, but disapproving of dirt doesn’t remove it.”"

"Economics is on the side of humanity now."

"Q. You do not consider your statement a disloyal one? A. No, sir. Scientific truth is beyond loyalty and disloyalty. Q. You are sure that your statement represents scientific truth? A. I am."

"“That insufferable, dull-witted donkey! That—” Hardin broke in: “Not at all. He’s merely the product of his environment. He doesn’t understand much except that ‘I got a gun and you ain’t.’ ”"

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