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“Now, Dors, you’re deliberately speaking in paradoxes to be annoying. A paradox arises only out of an ambiguity that deceives either unwittingly or by design. I don’t like that in science and I don’t like it in casual conversation, either, unless it is meant humorously, which I think is not the case now.”
You must have minimalism because every change, any change, has myriad side effects that can’t always be allowed for. If the change is too great and the side effects too many, then it becomes certain that the outcome will be far removed from anything you’ve planned and that it would be entirely unpredictable.”
People tended to avoid the humiliation of failure by joining the obviously winning side even against their own opinions.
“Easily. Intuition is the art, peculiar to the human mind, of working out the correct answer from data that is, in itself, incomplete or even, perhaps, misleading.”
“It’s all but impossible to change people’s minds and hearts, Raych. It’s enough to try and perhaps eliminate the worst of the injustices.”
“That was his lure. Sure.” “It’s ours, too, but the kid believes it. He talks about equality and popular participation in government. He even mentioned democracy.” Namarti snickered. “In twenty thousand years, democracy has never been used for very long without falling apart.”
It was not the dying that bothered him, he told himself. It was the matter of leaving the Psychohistory Project unfinished.
His mind, however firm and steady, did not have the resiliency and creativity that it had had when he was thirty and with each passing year, he knew he would have less.
“However, though the request is reasonable and the citizenry is better off paying taxes as their price for maintaining a stable and efficient government, they are nevertheless reluctant to do so. In order to overcome this reluctance, governments must make it appear that they are not taking too many credits, and that they are considering each citizen’s rights and benefits. In other words, they must lower the percentage taken out of low incomes; they must allow deductions of various kinds to be made before the tax is assessed, and so on.
The simplest tax is a poll tax, in which every individual pays the same amount, but the unfairness of treating rich and poor alike in this way is too evident to overlook.”
The poll tax has been tried now and then throughout history. It is never popular and it invariably gives rise to resistance of one form or another,
There was so much more in the past, so much less in the future, that the mind turned away from the looming shadow ahead to contemplate the safety of what had gone before.
“Now I can’t do anything of the sort. I have to put it before the Legislature. There are seventy-five hundred men and women who instantly turn into uncounted gaggles of geese the instant a suggestion is made. In the first place, where is the funding to come from? You can’t have, say, ten thousand more officers without having to pay ten thousand more salaries. Then, even if you agreed to something of the sort, who selects the new security officers? Who controls them? “The Legislature shouts at each other, argues, thunders, and lightens, and in the end—nothing is done. Hari, I couldn’t even do
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Seldon stood slowly, stiffly. He was due back at Streeling in an hour to meet Wanda and Palver. They had left word for him that they were bringing a great surprise. Another piece for the puzzle, Seldon hoped. He looked out one last time over Trantor and, before turning to make his way back to the gravitic repulsion elevator, smiled and softly said, “Foundation.”
This—this—was my life’s work. My past—humanity’s future. Foundation. So beautiful, so alive. And nothing can… Dors!
SELDON, HARI—…found dead, slumped over his desk in his office at Streeling University in 12,069 G.E. (1 F.E.). Apparently Seldon had been working up to his last moments on psychohistorical equations; his activated Prime Radiant was discovered clutched in his hand….
It has been said that Hari Seldon left this life as he lived it, for he died with the future he created unfolding all around him….
