More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Which is about as far as I can go in explaining color to a blind man—with myself as blind as the audience.
It was then that the Rossemites learned of sweeping battles and decimated populations or of tyrannical emperors and rebellious viceroys. And they would sigh and shake their heads, and draw their fur collars closer about their bearded faces as they sat about the village square in the weak sun and philosophized on the evil of men.
It was something inconceivable, and to many of the peasants of Rossem, scratching away at their fields, it might well seem that the end of the Galaxy was at hand.
So once again, Galactic history glided past peacefully enough, and the peasants scrabbled life out of the hard soil.
Pritcher’s annoyance at Channis’ bald question subsided. It was apparent, at least, that the age that he had felt creeping over him of late had not yet deprived him of his own capacity for making smooth the blunders of others.
“Your proof? Or evidence, assumptions, daydreams? Are you mad?”
“Perhaps because I can be trusted. Or aren’t you in the market for logical reasons?” “Or perhaps because you can’t be trusted. Which is logical enough, as it turns out.” “Are we matching paradoxes, or is this all a word game to see who can say the least in the most words?”
Let the Galaxy protect itself as best it can, since it stirred not a whit for my protection when I needed it.”
“That he most certainly was not, for I stripped his brain clean as any plucked chicken. It quivered bare and open before me and when he said Rossem was the Second Foundation, it was basic truth for I had ground him so flat and smooth that not the smidgen of a deceit could have found refuge in any microscopic crevice.”
“Now you see it,” agreed the First Speaker, “and now you don’t.”
“Well, he used to say that only a lie that wasn’t ashamed of itself could possibly succeed. He also said that nothing had to be true, but everything had to sound true.
“Do you mind, sir? How old is she?” “Fourteen, day before yesterday.” “Fourteen? Great Galaxy— Tell me, has she ever said she expects to marry someday?” “No, she hasn’t. Not to me.” “Well, if she ever does, shoot him. The one she’s going to marry, I mean.” He stared earnestly into the older man’s eyes. “I’m serious. Life could hold no greater horror than living with what she’ll be like when she’s twenty. I don’t mean to offend you, of course.” “You don’t offend me. I think I know what you mean.”
Speech, originally, was the device whereby Man learned, imperfectly, to transmit the thoughts and emotions of his mind. By setting up arbitrary sounds and combinations of sounds to represent certain mental nuances, he developed a method of communication—but one which in its clumsiness and thick-thumbed inadequacy degenerated all the delicacy of the mind into gross and guttural signaling.
The larger groups; the billions that occupied planets; the trillions that occupied Sectors; the quadrillions that occupied the whole Galaxy, became, not simply human beings, but gigantic forces amenable to statistical treatment—so that to Hari Seldon, the future became clear and inevitable, and the Plan could be set up.
You had hoped you would qualify. You had feared you would not. Actually, both hope and fear are weaknesses. You knew you would qualify and you hesitate to admit the fact because such knowledge might stamp you as cocksure and therefore unfit. Nonsense! The most hopelessly stupid man is he who is not aware that he is wise. It is part of your qualification that you knew you would qualify.”
An embarrassing and unwarranted invasion of a man’s last protecting stronghold, his own mind.
He read it through several times with an expression that grew blanker each time.
He was considering rapidly. It was no use telling her to forget the matter. With regard to the enemy, “forget” was a meaningless word; and the advice, insofar as it made the matter more important, would have had an opposite effect.
But the house was somehow very lonely at night and Dr. Darell found that the fate of the Galaxy made remarkably little difference while his daughter’s mad little life was in danger.
Remarkable what a fragile flower romance is. A blaster with a nervous operator behind it can spoil the whole thing.
Maybe it came of being fourteen.
No matter how the economy and sociology of the neighboring sectors of the Galaxy changed, there was always an elite; and it is always the characteristic of an elite that it possesses leisure as the great reward of its elite-hood.
Kalgan serviced all and barred none; since its commodity was in unfailing demand; since it had the wisdom to interfere in no world’s politics, to stand on no one’s legitimacy, it prospered when nothing else did, and remained fat when all grew thin.
Arcadia could not have moved if all the evil in the Galaxy had concentrated itself into a ball and hurled itself at her.
“Will you hear me speak now, Anthor? Or do you prefer to continue your role as ranting conspirator?”
Successive shocks have a decreasing effect—
