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After all, the essential point in running a risk is that the returns justify it.
Seldon’s laws help those who help themselves.”
“The times make the man,” said the third man.
You might as well ask why the same man sprints safely across an obstacle course in the day, and falls over the furniture in his room at night.”
“The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of physics, and if the probabilities of error are greater, it is only because history does not deal with as many humans as physics does atoms, so that individual variations count for more.
And, unfortunately, despite the frothy shrillness of the televisors, “intelligence,” “espionage,” and “spy stuff” are at best a sordid business of routine betrayal and bad faith. It is excused by society since it is in the “interest of the State,” but since philosophy seemed always to lead Captain Pritcher to the conclusion that even in that holy interest, society is much more easily soothed than one’s own conscience—he discouraged philosophy.
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.
He slept that night the sleep of a successfully stubborn man.
It is the invariable lesson to humanity that distance in time, and in space as well, lends focus. It is not recorded, incidentally, that the lesson has ever been permanently learned.
“Were I to use the wits the good Spirits gave me,” he said, “then I would say this lady cannot exist—for what sane man would hold a dream to be reality. Yet rather would I not be sane and lend belief to charmed, enchanted eyes.”
‘Gratitude is best and most effective when it does not evaporate itself in empty phrases.’
And so it happened, that when others bent their knee, he refused and added loudly that his ancestors in their time bowed no knee to any stinking mayor. And in his ancestors’ time the mayor was elected anyhow, and kicked out at will, and that the only people that inherited anything by right of birth were the congenital idiots.
Inevitably, he said, “What is the meaning of this?” It is the precise question and the precise wording thereof that has been put to the atmosphere on such occasions by an incredible variety of men since humanity was invented. It is not recorded that it has ever been asked for any purpose other than dignified effect.
Married life had taught Toran the futility of arguing with a female in a dark-brown mood.
“The human mind works at low efficiency. Twenty percent is the figure usually given. When, momentarily, there is a flash of greater power it is termed a hunch, or insight, or intuition.
