Foundation (Foundation, #1)

by Isaac Asimov

The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity—a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop.

“Violence,” came the retort, “is the last refuge of the incompetent. But I certainly don’t intend to lay down the welcome mat and brush off the best furniture for their use.”

“He’s due in five minutes, isn’t he?” “I presume so. He appeared at noon last time.” “What if he doesn’t?” “Are you going to wear me down with your worries all your life? If he doesn’t, he won’t.”

“I know. A fire eater must eat fire even if he has to kindle it himself. And you, Lee, have got to worry even if you must kill yourself to invent something to worry about.”

Salvor Hardin’s epigrams, “Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right!”

Ponyets rose, and Gorov rose with him. “What are you going to do?” The trader smiled. “Gorov, I don’t know—not yet. But if the crux of the matter is to make a sale, then I’m your man. I’m not a boaster as a general thing, but there’s one thing I’ll always back up. I’ve never ended up below quota yet.”

“That danger is coming. Any fool can tell a crisis when it arrives. The real service to the state is to detect it in embryo.

Hardin once said: ‘To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.’ I’ll improvise.”

Mallow said icily, “I can. There’s no merit in discipline under ideal circumstances. I’ll have it in the face of death, or it’s useless.

Since when does prejudice follow any law but its own.

“I don’t propose to force Korell or any other world to accept something I know they don’t want. No, Sutt. If nuclear power makes them dangerous, a sincere friendship through trade will be many times better than an insecure overlordship, based on the hated supremacy of a foreign spiritual power, which, once it weakens ever so slightly, can only fall entirely and leave nothing substantial behind except an immortal fear and hate.”

“Now any dogma, primarily based on faith and emotionalism, is a dangerous weapon to use on others, since it is almost impossible to guarantee that the weapon will never be turned on the user. For a hundred years now, we’ve supported a ritual and mythology that is becoming more and more venerable, traditional—and immovable. In some ways, it isn’t under our control any more.”

“This is a Seldon crisis we’re facing, Sutt, and Seldon crises are not solved by individuals but by historic forces.

Hari Seldon, when he planned our course of future history, did not count on brilliant heroics but on the broad sweeps of economics and sociology. So the solutions to the various crises must be achieved by the forces that become available to us at the time.

“The whole war is a battle between those two systems; between the Empire and the Foundation; between the big and the little. To seize control of a world, they bribe with immense ships that can make war, but lack all economic significance. We, on the other hand, bribe with little things, useless in war, but vital to prosperity and profits.

There will be other crises in the time to come when money power has become as dead a force as religion is now. Let my successors solve those new problems, as I have solved the one of today.”