Quotes from Foundation and Empire

“Society is much more easily soothed than one's own conscience.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“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, quote from Foundation and Empire

“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, quote from Foundation and Empire

“Pyscho-history dealt not with man, but with man-masses. It was the science of mobs; mobs in their billions. It could forecast reactions to stimuli with something of the accuracy that a lesser science could bring to the forecast of a rebound of a billiard ball. The reaction of one man could be forecast by no known mathematics; the reaction of a billion is something else again.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“For a wise man, I have been told, once said, ‘Gratitude is best and most effective when it does not evaporate in empty phrases.’ But alas, my lady, I am but a mass of empty phrases, it would seem.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“I am afraid a monster is grown that will devour all of us. Yet we must fight him.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“Married life had taught him the futility of arguing with a female in a dark-brown mood.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“There's probably no one so easily bribed, but he lacks even the fundamental honesty of honorable corruption. He doesn't stay bribed; not for any sum.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“I'll take that challenge. It's a dead hand against a living will.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“It is the invariable lesson to humanity that distance in time, and in space as well, lends focus.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“And so it happened, that when others bent their knee, he refused and added loudly that his ancestors in their time bowed no knee to any stinking mayor. And in his ancestors’ time the mayor was elected anyhow, and kicked out at will, and that the only people that inherited anything by right of birth were the congenital idiots.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“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, quote from Foundation and Empire

“To him, a stilted geometric love of arrangement was “system,” and indefatigable and feverish interest in the pettiest facets of day-to-day bureaucracy was “industry”, indecision when right was “caution”, and blind stubbornness when wrong, “determination.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“After all, the essential point in running a risk is that the returns justify it.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“Every vice of the Empire has been repeated in the Foundation. Inertia! Our ruling class knows one law; no
change. Despotism! They know one rule; force. Maldistribution! They know one desire; to hold what is
theirs.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“Gratitude is best and most effective when it does not evaporate itself in empty phrases.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“To a thoughtful biographer, [Ebling Mis's house] was "the symbolization of a retreat from a non-academic reality", a society columnist gushed silkily at its "frightfully masculine atmosphere of careless disorder", a University Ph.D called it brusquely, "bookish, but unorganized", a non-university friend said, "good for a drink anytime and you can put your feet on the sofa", and a breezy newsweekly broadcast, that went in for color, spoke of the "rooky, down-to-earth, no-nonsense living quarters of blaspheming, Leftish, balding Ebling Mis".

To Bayta, who thought of no audience but herself at the moment, and who had the advantage of first-hand information, it was merely sloppy.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“I’m being accused of modesty, a horrible and thoroughly unnatural crime.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“The thanks of a weak one are but of little value," he muttered, "but you have them, for truly, in this past week, little but scraps have come my way- and for all my body is small, yet is my appetite unseemly great.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“...centuries would yet pass before the mighty works of fifty generations of humans would decay past use. Only the declining powers of men, themselves, rendered them useless now.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“You’re surrounded by people in the waking period, and you feel their eyes and their hopes on you. You can’t stand up under it. In the sleep period, you’re free.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“The clown’s eyes sidled towards her, then drew away quickly. “But they kept me away from you earlier-and, on my word, you may laugh, but I was lonely for missing friendship.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“He’s but a windlet that blows the dust about my ankles. There is another that I flee, and he is a storm that sweeps the worlds aside and throws them plunging at each other.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“Why, they are so sure of themselves that they do not even hurry. They move slowly, phlegmatically; they speak of necessary centuries. They swallow worlds at leisure; creep through systems with dawdling complacence.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“Excellence, he is known as the Mule. He is spoken of little, in a factual sense, but I have gathered the scraps and fragments of knowledge and winnowed out the most probable of them. He is apparently a man of neither birth nor standing. His father, unknown. His mother, dead in childbirth. His upbringing, that of a vagabond. His education, that of the tramp worlds, and the backwash alleys of space. He has no name other than that of the Mule, a name reportedly applied by himself to himself, and signifying, by popular explanation, his immense physical strength, and stubbornness of purpose.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“Si utilizara el ingenio que los buenos espíritus me dieron, entonces diría que esta dama no puede existir, pues ¿qué hombre en su sano juicio llamaría al sueño realidad? Sin embargo yo preferiría no ser cuerdo y prestar crédito a mis ojos hechizados”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“From the radiating point of Siwenna, the forces of the Empire reached out cautiously into the black unknown of the Periphery. Giant ships passed the vast distances that separated the vagrant stars at the Galaxy’s rim, and felt their way around the outermost edge of Foundation influence.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“Were I to use the wits the Spirits gave me, then I would say this lady cannot exist cannot exist - for what sane man would hold dream to be reality. Yet rather would I not be sane and lend belief to charmed, enchanted eyes.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

“Were I to use the wits the Spirits gave me, then I would say this lady cannot 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, quote from Foundation and Empire

“Beliefs can't be shaken short of a major shock, in which case, a fairly complete mental discruption results. Mild cases - hysteria, morbid sense of insecurity. Advanced cases - madness and suicide.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Empire

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Popular quotes

“Breath of the winds; dancing flame; peace of the earth; song of the waves.”
― Juliet Marillier, quote from Seer of Sevenwaters

“It’s dangerous to assume that because a person is drawn to holiness in his study that he is thereby a holy man. There is irony here. I am sure that the reason I have a deep hunger to learn of the holiness of God is precisely because I am not holy. I am a profane man—a man who spends more time out of the temple than in it. But I have had just enough of a taste of the majesty of God to want more. I know what it means to be a forgiven man and what it means to be sent on a mission. My soul cries for more. My soul needs more.”
― R.C. Sproul, quote from The Holiness of God

“Polite conversation followed rules. Topics were sequential, orderly, and flowed from one to the next like a gentle current when all those conversing were skilled.”
― Kresley Cole, quote from If You Dare

“The natural impulse of men is to follow, he thought, and whoever has the strongest sense of purpose will always dominate the rest.”
― Robert Harris, quote from Pompeii

“У неё был такой же тупой вид, какой бывает у бретонского крестьянина, когда он слушает проповедь священника.

скрытность – единственное пристанище для душ чистых и страждущих.

Тонкое, чисто женское чутье говорило ей, что гораздо лучше повиноваться человеку одаренному, нежели руководить глупцом, и что молодая супруга, принужденная действовать и думать за мужа,- ни женщина, ни мужчина, что, отрекаясь от своей злополучной женской слабости, она вместе с тем теряет и всю свою женственную прелесть, не получая взамен ни одного преимущества, которые наши законы предоставили мужчинам.

расставаясь с Парижем, он почти ни о чём не сожалел. Женщины уже не производили на него впечатления, -- оттого ли, что, по его мнению, истинная страсть должна занять слишком большое место в жизни политического деятеля, или оттого, что волокитство -- это времяпрепровождение пошляков -- казалось ему слишком пустым занятием для человека с сильной душою. Все мы притязаем на душевную силу. Ни один француз, пусть самый заурядный, не согласится прослыть всего лишь остроумцем.

Многозначительное слово «специалист» словно нарочно создано для такой вот разновидности безмозглых моллюсков от политики и литературы.

Только в известном возрасте иные утонченные женщины умеют сделать красноречивым свой облик. Но что же открывает тридцатилетней женщине секрет выразительной внешности: радость или печаль, счастье или несчастье? Это живая загадка, и всякий истолкует ее так, как подскажут ему желания, надежды, убеждения.

Женщин более всего умиляет в нас та ласковая утонченность, та изысканность чувств, какие свойственны им самим; ибо для них нежность и утонченность служат верными признаками «истинности».

Никогда не следует опасаться недобрых чувств в любви: они целительны; женщины падают только под ударами добродетели.

Чем сдержаннее была эта ласка, тем сильнее, тем опаснее была она. К их общему несчастью, не было в ней и тени фальши. То сочетались две прекрасные души, разделенные тем, что является законом, соединенные тем, что обольщает в природе.

Вообще солдаты, которым довелось испытать много бед, любят детей, потому что понимают, как жалка-сила и сколько преимуществ у слабости.”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from A Woman Of Thirty

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.