Prelude to Foundation (Foundation, #6)

by Isaac Asimov

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.

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

Status won’t sit still under you; you have to continually fight to keep from sinking.

even the most careful forethought and the most cleverly designed computer programs can’t always predict what is essentially unpredictable.”

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

“The Imperial forces must keep their hands off, but they find that they can

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.”

“Emotions, my dear Seldon, are a powerful engine of human action, far more powerful than human beings themselves realize, and you cannot know how much can be done with the merest touch