“You show me someone who can't understand people and I'll show you someone who has built up a false image of himself.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation's Edge
“It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation's Edge
“The advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation's Edge
“The Library was outmoded and archaic—it had been so even in Ebling Mis's time—but that was all to the good. Pelorat always rubbed his hands with excitement when he thought of an old and outmoded Library. The older and the more outmoded, the more likely it was to have what he needed. In his dreams, he would enter the Library and ask in breathless alarm, 'Has the Library been modernized? Have you thrown out the old tapes and computerizations?' And always he imagined the answer from dusty and ancient librarians, 'As it has been, Professor, so it is still.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation's Edge
“He didn’t believe that, surely.” “Of course not! But he had to pretend he did, as otherwise he would have had no choice but to be insulted. And since there would be nothing he could do about that, being insulted would only lead to humiliation. And since he didn’t want that, the simplest path to follow was to believe what I said.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation's Edge
“humanity could share a common insanity and be immersed in a common illusion while living in a common chaos.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation's Edge
“We abandoned the appearance of power to preserve the essence of it.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation's Edge
“A wall is happy when it is well designed, when it rests firmly on its foundation, when its symmetry balances its part and produces no unpleasant stresses. Good design can be worked out on the mathematical principles of mechanics.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation's Edge
“A happy wall is a long-lived wall, a practical wall, a useful wall.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation's Edge
“You show me someone who can’t understand people and I’ll show you someone who has built up a false image of himself—no offense intended.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation's Edge
“Never let your sense of morals keep you from doing what is right.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation's Edge
“...the advance of civilisation is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation's Edge
“the eye were no more than sense organs. The brain was no more than a central switchboard, encased in bone and removed from the working surface of the body. It was the hands that were the working surface, the hands that felt and manipulated the universe. 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, quote from Foundation's Edge
“When one’s home has a really excellent computer capable of reaching other computers anywhere in the Galaxy, one scarcely needs to budge, you know.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation's Edge
“There’s no record in the history of the Galaxy of any society being so foolish as to use nuclear explosions as a weapon of war.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation's Edge
“Anyone who displays a capacity for double-dealing must forever be suspected of being capable of displaying it again.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation's Edge
“Well, besides, I’ve arranged with the computer that anyone who doesn’t look and sound like one of us will be killed if he—or she—tries to board the ship. I’ve taken the liberty of explaining that to the Port Commander. I told him very politely that I would love to turn off that particular facility out of deference to the reputation that the Sayshell City Spaceport holds for absolute integrity and security—throughout the Galaxy, I said—but the ship is a new model and I didn’t know how to turn it off.”
“He didn’t believe that, surely.”
“Of course not! But he had to pretend he did, as otherwise he would have had no choice but to be insulted. And since there would be nothing he could do about that, being insulted would only lead to humiliation. And since he didn’t want that, the simplest path to follow was to believe what I said.”
“And that’s another example of how people are?”
“Yes. You’ll get used to this.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation's Edge
“She looked over to answer it and froze as she saw the name Jayne and the picture of an incredibly beautiful female blowing a kiss. What the hell was that? Before she could recover from the shock, it rolled to the speaker voice mail he used whenever he was home. “Hey, sexy baby. It’s Jaynie calling about your girl problems. As always, I’m more than happy to take care of your needs, and will be there as soon as I can. Just hold tight and stay precious, my beautiful sweet cheeks. Don’t want to see no frownie baby when I get there. I promise, I’m going to put a giant smile on that gorgeous face of yours. Love you, sexy T! See you soon.” Her jaw slack, Felicia wasn’t sure what pissed her off the most. The woman’s looks. Her words. Or that exaggerated high-pitched sopping, sweet, sultry voice. Maybe it was all three that came together to light a fury in her so foul, she could taste the Talyn-blood she intended to let. Oh, forget the Ring. The Splatterdome was here. Tonight. This condo. And she was going to get her pound of Iron Hammer flesh. *”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, quote from Born of Defiance
“I was in close quarters with some representative specimens of the most dangerous creature in the history of the world, the white man in a suit.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, quote from The Sympathizer
“Don’t let the bad leg fool you, son. If you hurt my princess, I will be the nightmare you never see coming.”
― C.J. Redwine, quote from The Shadow Queen
“Before World War II, when physics was primarily a European enterprise, physicists used the Greek language to name particles. Photon, electron, meson, baryon, lepton, and even hadron originated from the Greek. But later brash, irreverent, and sometimes silly Americans took over, and the names lightened up. Quark is a nonsense word from James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, but from that literary high point, things went downhill. The distinctions between the different quark types are referred to by the singularly inappropriate term flavor. We might have spoken of chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, pistachio, cherry, and mint chocolate chip quarks but we don’t. The six flavors of quarks are up, down, strange, charmed, bottom, and top. At one point, bottom and top were considered too risqué, so for a brief time they became truth and beauty.”
― Leonard Susskind, quote from The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics
“Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.”
― J.M. Barrie, quote from Peter Pan (Illustrated with Interactive Elements)
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.