Prelude to Foundation (Foundation, #6)

by Isaac Asimov

A mathematician, however, who could back his prophecy with mathematical formulas and terminology, might be understood by no one and yet believed by everyone.”

obtrude

There was a tendency to pastel shades among the men, oddly enough, while the women mostly wore white.

nonvituperative.

offal

obloquy

concatenations

inveigh

wry

So the credits still go—unproductively—to the armed forces and vital areas of the social good are allowed to deteriorate. That’s what I call decay.

patina

“How harmful overspecialization is. It cuts knowledge at a million points and leaves it bleeding.”

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.”

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.

(If something quite accidental can easily become viewed as a tradition and be made unbreakable or nearly so, thought Seldon, would that be a law of psychohistory?

inimical

tyro,

depilation,

censorious.

encomiums

“I suspect that those elements of a population that have a smaller stake in the material natural world are more apt to find solace in what you call supernaturalism—the poor, the disinherited, the downtrodden.

religions tend to accumulate wealth when successful and that eventually tends to distort the economic development of a society.

“Asceticism

Worst of all, the Emperor had had to remember to avoid making commitments of substance, while freely applying the lotion of words without substance.

dishabille

amphisexual

“Oh sure,” said Amaryl passionately. “There are some. They let a few do it so that they can say it can be done.

At the slightest stress, human beings seemed to divide themselves into antagonistic groups.

It’s these respectable people here who create those hooligans out there.”

“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.”

“For one thing, there have been many revolutions in Galactic history that have overthrown tyrannies, sometimes on individual planets, sometimes in groups of them, occasionally in the Empire itself or in the pre-Imperial regional governments. 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.”

mephitic

rococo