Foundation and Earth (Foundation, #5)

by Isaac Asimov

“Even so,” said Trevize, “I must search. —Even if the endless powdering of stars in the Galaxy makes the quest seem hopeless, and even if I must do it alone.”

“You can’t have geniuses and saints without having people far outside the norm, and I don’t see how you can have such things on only one side of the norm. There is bound to be a certain symmetry.

He stared at the computer with warm relief. It had worked perfectly. It had been, if anything, more responsive, and what he felt for it he could only describe as love. After all, while he held its hands (he resolutely refused to admit to himself that he thought of it as her hands) they were part of each other, and his will directed, controlled, experienced, and was part of a greater self. He and it must feel, in a small way (he suddenly, and disturbingly, thought), what Gaia did in a much larger way. He shook his head. No! In the case of the computer and himself, it was he—Trevize—who was in entire control. The computer was a thing of total submission.

"...total submission." is a way to describe it...

If we only obey those rules that we think are just and reasonable, then no rule will stand, for there is no rule that some will not think is unjust and unreasonable. And if we wish to push our own individual advantage, as we see it, then we will always find reason to believe that some hampering rule is unjust and unreasonable. What starts, then, as a shrewd trick ends in anarchy and disaster, even for the shrewd trickster, since he, too, will not survive the collapse of society.”

“Exactly. Who knows? In a Galaxy of anarchy, how is it possible to sort out reasonable actions from unreasonable ones? How decide between right and wrong, good and evil, justice and crime, useful and useless?

Superstition always directs action in the absence of knowledge. The Foundation believes in the Seldon Plan, though no one in our realm can understand it, interpret its details, or use it to predict. We follow blindly out of ignorance and faith, and isn’t that superstition?”

I accept only what I am forced to accept by reasonably reliable evidence, and keep that acceptance tentative pending the arrival of further evidence. That doesn’t make us popular.” “Why not?” said Trevize. “We wouldn’t be popular anywhere. Where is the world whose people don’t prefer a comfortable, warm, and well-worn belief, however illogical, to the chilly winds of uncertainty?

Common belief, even universal belief, is not, in itself, evidence.”

“if you wish to call the truth impossible, that is your privilege, but it will get you nowhere.”

It is I, not you, who first decided I must search for Earth; it is I, not you, who see value in it; it is I, not you, who am driven. Let it be I, then, not you, who take the risk. Let me go on alone.

Trevize said grimly, “Very well, then. I’ve given you your chance. We go on together.” “Together,” said Bliss. Pelorat smiled slightly, and gripped Trevize’s shoulder. “Together. Always.”

No one can encompass all of knowledge.

You have never lived but in swarms, and you know no way of life but to be constantly forced, in even the smallest things, to bend your wills to those of others or, which is equally vile, to spend your days struggling to force others to bend their wills to yours. Where is any possible freedom there? Freedom is nothing if it is not to live as you wish! Exactly as you wish!

“Consider the delicacy of the eye and ear, and how they can turn small quantities of photons and air vibrations into information. That would seem unbelievable if you had never come across it before.

If you start dismissing anyone or anything you want to do away with as just a this or just a that, you can destroy anything you wish. There are always categories you can find for them.”

Human beings are very conservative in some ways and virtually never change numerical conventions once they grow used to them. They even come to mistake them for laws of nature,