Quotes from Prelude to Foundation

“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, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“Mathematicians deal with large numbers sometimes, but never in their income.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“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?”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“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, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“How harmful overspecialization is. It cuts knowledge at a million points and leaves it bleeding.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“A great many things are possible.” And to himself he added: But not practical.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“The Imperial forces must keep their hands off, but they find that they can do much even so. Each sector is encouraged to be suspicious of its neighbors. Within each sector, economic and social classes are encouraged to wage a kind of war with each other. The result is that all over Trantor it is impossible for the people to take united action. Everywhere, the people would rather fight each other than make a common stand against the central tyranny and the Empire rules without having to exert force.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“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.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“Often, this has only meant a change in tyranny. In other words, one ruling class is replaced by another—sometimes by one that is more efficient and therefore still more capable of maintaining itself—while the poor and downtrodden remain poor and downtrodden or become even worse off.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“There are many people, many worlds who believe in supernaturalism in one form or another... religion, if you like the word better. We may disagree with them in one way or another, but we are as likely to be wrong in our disbelief as they in their belief. In any case, there is no disgrace in such belief and my questions were not intended as insults.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“There is nothing your knife handlers can do in the way of rioting and demonstrating that will have any permanent effect as long as, in the extremity, there is an army equipped with kinetic, chemical, and neurological weapons that is willing to use them against your people. You can get all the downtrodden and even all the respectables on your side, but you must somehow win over the security forces and the Imperial army or at least seriously weaken their loyalty to the rulers.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“There is a longing for a supposedly simple and virtuous past that is almost universal among the people of a complex and vicious society.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“How could any number of people—all together—know enough? It reminded Seldon of a puzzle that had been presented to him when he was young: Can you have a relatively small piece of platinum, with handholds affixed, that could not be lifted by the bare, unaided strength of any number of people, no matter how many? The answer was yes. A cubic meter of platinum weighs 22,420 kilograms under standard gravitational pull. If it is assumed that each person could heave 120 kilograms up from the ground, then 188 people would suffice to lift the platinum. —But you could not squeeze 188 people around the cubic meter so that each one could get a grip on it. You could perhaps not squeeze more than 9 people around it. And levers or other such devices were not allowed. It had to be “bare, unaided strength.” In the same way, it could be that there was no way of getting enough people to handle the total amount of knowledge required for psychohistory, even if the facts were stored in computers rather than in individual human brains. Only so many people could gather round the knowledge, so to speak, and communicate it.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“Can't you try>? However useless the effort may seem to you to be, have you anything better to do with your life? Have you some worthier goal? Have you a purpose that will justify you in your own eyes to some greater extent?”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“Historians pick and choose and every one of them picks and chooses the same thing.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“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?”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“Seldon, Hari—It is customary to think of Hari Seldon only in connection with psychohistory, to see him only as Mathematics and as social change personified. There is no doubt that he himself

Encouraged this for at no time in his formal writings did he give any hint as to how he came to solve the various problems of
Psychohistory. His leaps of thought might have all been plucked From

Air, for all he tells us. Nor does he tell us of the blind alleys

Into which he crept or the wrong turnings he may have made.

…As for his private life, it is a blank. Concerning his parent and Siblings,

We know a handful of factors, nor more. His only son,

Raych Seldon, is known to have been adopted, but how that

Came about is not known. Concerning his wife, we only

Know that she existed. Clearly, Seldon wanted to a cipher

Except where psychohistory was concerned. It is as though he felt--

Or wanted it to be felt—that he did not live, he merely psychohistorified.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“Dors muttered to him, “Stop studying humanity. Be aware of your surroundings.” “I’ll try.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“They work off all their resentments, enjoy all the smug self-satisfaction a young revolutionary would have, and by the time they take their place in the Imperial hierarchy, they are ready to settle down into conformity and obedience.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“Защо, зачуди се той, толкова много хора прекарват дните си, без да се опитат да открият отговори на вечните въпроси? Нима в живота има нещо по-вълнуващо от търсенето на отговори?”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“He clearly knew how dangerous it was to have an excited twelve-year-old handling a powerful weapon.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“It is not important what can or cannot be done. What is important is what people will or will not believe can be done.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“When they sat down at a small table and punched in their orders,”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“if people believe this, they would act on that belief. Many a prophecy, by the mere force of its being believed, is transmuted”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“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”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“I still can't quite grasp what you are telling me. I find it impossible to believe that there would be such unreasoning feeling against harmless people."
Amaryl said bitterly, "That's because you've never had any occasion to interest yourself in such things. It can all pass right under your nose and you wouldn't smell a thing because it doesn't affect you."
Dors said, “Mr. Amaryl, Dr. Seldon is a mathematician like you and his head can sometimes be in the clouds. You must understand that. I am a historian, however. I know that it isn’t unusual to have one group of people look down upon another group. There are peculiar and almost ritualistic hatreds that have no rational justification and that can have their serious historical influence. It’s too bad.”
Saying something is ‘too bad’ is easy. You say you disapprove, which makes you a nice person, and then you can go about your own business and not be interested anymore. It’s a lot worse than ‘too bad.’ It’s against everything decent and natural. We’re all of us the same, yellow-hairs and black-hairs, tall and short, Easterners, Westerners, Southerners, and Outworlders. We’re all of us, you and I and even the Emperor, descended from the people of Earth, aren’t we?”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“—Reflexionó unos segundos, mirando a la mujer sentada frente a él y sintiendo que ella podía hacer su desierto menos parecido a un destierro. Se acordó de la otra mujer que trató unos años atrás, pero la borró de su mente con un esfuerzo deliberado. Si alguna vez encontraba otra compañera, tenía que ser una que conociera y comprendiera lo que era el saber, la erudición, y lo que todo ello exigía de una persona.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“You're a Lousy dame, lady," said Raych.
"I'm a Lousy dame with a quick knife, Raych, so get moving.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

“A mathematician, however, who could back his prophecy with mathematical formulas and terminology, might be understood by no one and yet believed by everyone.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation

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Popular quotes

“Let us narrow the arguments down further. In certain respects, the theme of supplementarity is certainly no more than one theme among others. It is in a chain, carried by it. Perhaps one could substitute something else for it. But it happens that this theme describes the chain itself, the being-chain of a textual chain, the structure of substitution, the articulation of desire and of language, the logic of all conceptual oppositions taken over by Rousseau…It tells us in a text what a text is, it tells us in writing what writing it, in Rousseau’s writing it tells us Jean-Jacque’s desire etc…the concept of the supplement and the theory of writing designate textuality itself in Rousseau’s text in an indefinitely multiplied structure—en abyme.”
― Jacques Derrida, quote from Of Grammatology

“Would it trouble you if I remained?”
“No,” she replied, around a mouthful of chicken.
He took his accustomed seat to her left, but said nothing.
“Do you want any of this?”
“No,” he answered gravely. “I do not normally eat this mortal fare.”
“You should try it.” She stopped, trying to remember if she had ever seen the Lady of Elliath eat anything. Her memory wasn’t up to it. She doubted if anyone’s was—with the possible exception of Latham or Belfas.
Stefanos watched as the fork fell slowly away from her mouth. He saw her face lengthen and felt his hand clenching once again into a fist. This time he felt he knew what he had done.
“Sarillorn,” he said, almost quickly, “if you wish, I will try what you are eating.”
She started and then looked up. “Pardon?”
“I will have some—chicken?”
The plate stared up at her as if it had become a living entity. Very slowly she cut a piece of her dinner and handed him her fork. Her hands were trembling.
He looked at it, his expression no less grave than it was when he asked if he might remain each evening. Then he took it and raised it to his mouth.
Erin watched as he chewed, each movement precise and almost meticulously timed. She counted to five and then watched him swallow.
He turned to meet her wide stare.
“It is—interesting,” he said, still grave. “Perhaps I will join you in more of this—” He gave a controlled gesture. “—at another time.”
Erin laughed.
The sound seemed to come from everywhere, enclosing him as her light had once done.
“You, you’re the most powerful force the Enemy has—and you’ve never lifted a fork!”
He was torn then, torn between pleasure at this strange laugh and anger at being the cause of it. No mortal had ever laughed at him before.
But unlike other laughter, this held a sense of wonder in it. It puzzled him; he listened.
“Tomorrow,” Erin said, a smile lingering, “we can try vegetables.”
She began to laugh anew, but he did not ask why.”
― Michelle Sagara West, quote from Into the Dark Lands

“parasites make up the majority of species on Earth. According to one estimate, parasites may outnumber free-living species four to one. In other words, the study of life is, for the most part, parasitology. The book in your”
― Carl Zimmer, quote from Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures

“The fundamental metaphor of National Socialism as it related to the world around it was the garden, not the wild forest. One of the most important Nazi ideologists, R.W. Darré, made clear the relationship between gardening and genocide: “He who leaves the plants in a garden to themselves will soon find to his surprise that the garden is overgrown by weeds and that even the basic character of the plants has changed. If therefore the garden is to remain the breeding ground for the plants, if, in other words, it is to lift itself above the harsh rule of natural forces, then the forming will of a gardener is necessary, a gardener who, by providing suitable conditions for growing, or by keeping harmful influences away, or by both together, carefully tends what needs tending and ruthlessly eliminates the weeds which would deprive the better plants of nutrition, air, light, and sun. . . . Thus we are facing the realization that questions of breeding are not trivial for political thought, but that they have to be at the center of all considerations, and that their answers must follow from the spiritual, from the ideological attitude of a people. We must even assert that a people can only reach spiritual and moral equilibrium if a well-conceived breeding plan stands at the very center of its culture.”
― Derrick Jensen, quote from The Culture of Make Believe

“Though they are quick to put others down, unhealthy narcissists view themselves in absolutely positive terms. They”
― Daniel Goleman, quote from Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships

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