The Foundation Trilogy (Foundation (Publication Order) # 1-3)

by Isaac Asimov

All the land surface of Trantor, 75,000,000 square miles in extent, was a single city. The population, at its height, was well in excess of forty billions. This enormous population was devoted almost entirely to the administrative necessities of Empire, and found themselves all too few for the complications of the task.

Q. You are sure that your statement represents scientific truth? A. I am. Q. On what basis? A. On the basis of the mathematics of psychohistory. Q. Can you prove that this mathematics is valid'? A. Only to another mathematician.

The psychohistoric trend of a planet-full of people contains a huge inertia.

"Don't you see? It's Galaxywide. It's a worship of the past. It's a deterioration – a stagnation!"

they were scientists enough to admit that they were wrong –

"Why, you unweaned cub,

"Here, take this, then, and keep still." The band was about her waist and the necklace around her neck. He pushed the knob himself and stepped back. The Commdora drew in her breath and held out her hands stiffly. She fingered the necklace gingerly, and gasped again. The Commdor rubbed his hands with satisfaction and said, "You may wear it tonight – and I'll get you more. Now keep still." The Commdora kept still.

Mallow jerked his head, "There isn't much law out there where I come from. Fighting and scars are part of a trader's overhead.

"It is unscientific to suppose meaningless cases."

You make mouth noises like what we call a patriot.

"Doc," said Devers, patiently, "don't be a hick tom the sticks.

It occurred to him that there was a fallacy in condescension, since it was mistaken for permission to argue eternally; to grow contentious; to wallow in dialectic.

'Gratitude is best and most effective when it does not evaporate itself in empty phrases.'

"Do you feel it, too, then? This miserable sense of defeat?" Ebling Mis nodded slowly, "I do. It's a mass psychosis, an unprintable mob panic.

Mule isn't a superman. If he is finally defeated, everyone will see that for himself. It's just that he's an unknown, and the legends cluster quickly. He's supposed to be a mutant. Well, what of that? A mutant means a 'superman' to the ignoramuses of humanity. Nothing of the sort.

Surrounded by the mechanical perfections of human efforts, encircled by the industrial marvels of mankind freed of the tyranny of environment – they returned to the land. In the huge traffic clearings, wheat and corn grew. In the shadow of the towers, sheep grazed.

"By the Stars of the Galaxy – now, I know."

Her lips tightened as she thought of her father looking up from his book-viewer just long enough to say, "But if you're going to pretend you're nineteen, Arcadia, what will you do when you're twenty-five and all the boys think you're thirty?"

She remembered a favorite line, and used it promptly. "Men are so stupid!"

Speech, originally, was the device whereby Man learned, imperfectly, to transmit the thoughts and emotions of his mind. By setting up arbitrary sounds and combinations of sounds to represent certain mental nuances, be developed a method of communication – but one which in its clumsiness and thick-thumbed inadequacy degenerated all the delicacy of the mind into gross and guttural signaling.

Grimly, Man had instinctively sought to circumvent the prison bars of ordinary speech. Semantics, symbolic logic, psychoanalysis – they had all been devices whereby speech could either be refined or by-passed.

The science of electroencephalography was at once new and old. It was old in the sense that the knowledge of the microcurrents generated by nerve cells of living beings belonged to that immense category of human knowledge whose origin was completely lost It was knowledge that stretched back as far as the earliest remnants of human history–

The brain-waves recorded on neatly squared paper in trembling peaks and troughs are the mirrors of the combined thought-pulses of billions of cells.

Sorry if I overplayed the drama a bit, Doc. You're so inhuman about this, I forget you have feelings.

I have dinned it in your ears and you have preferred the advice of others because it stuffed your ego better.