Foundation and Empire Quotes

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

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

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

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