Foundation and Empire (Foundation, #2)

by Isaac Asimov

Unfortunately, an uninformed public tends to confuse scholarship with magicianry, and love life seems to be that factor which requires the largest quantity of magical tinkering.”

you have children and friends. You have a country for which you have mouthed phrases of love and folly in the past. Come, if I should decide to use force, my aim would not be so poor as to strike you.” Barr said coldly, “What do you want?”

‘Where the stars are scattered thinly,’ ” quoted Barr, “ ‘And the cold of space seeps in.’

“In the obvious way. I could become an explorer. I could find this Foundation you speak of and observe with my eyes. You say there are two?”

Observers

They let others take the uncertain paths of force, while they maneuvered surely and quietly.”

“Patrician, they are not magicians; they are devils. It is as far from belief as the outer galaxies from here. Conceive it! It is a world the size of a handkerchief, of a fingernail; with resources so petty, power so minute, a population so microscopic as would never suffice the most backward worlds of the dusty prefects of the Dark Stars. Yet with that, a people so proud and ambitious as to dream quietly and methodically of Galactic rule.

Not all the might of the Empire could avail to crush this pygmy world.”