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Can’t you have genius without criminals?” “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.
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.”
Rules, established with reason and justice, can easily outlive their usefulness as circumstances change, yet can remain in force through inertia. It is then not only right, but useful, to break those rules as a way of advertising the fact that they have become useless—or even actually harmful.”
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?
A planet might deteriorate even if human beings existed upon it, if the society were itself abnormal and did not understand the importance of preserving the environment.” “Surely,” said Pelorat, “such a society would quickly be destroyed. I don’t think it would be possible for human beings to fail to understand the importance of retaining the very factors that are keeping them alive.”
when you have no basis on which to make a choice yourself, where’s the harm in at least considering the computer’s choice?”
“Society defines what constitutes an offense. To you, it may seem irrational and arbitrary, but to us it is not, and this is our world on which we have the full right to say that in this and that, you have done wrong and deserve to die.”
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.”
“There’s natural size, a natural complexity, some optimum quality for everything, whether star or atom, and it’s certainly true of living things and living societies. I don’t say the old Galactic Empire was ideal, and I can certainly see flaws in the Foundation Confederation, but I’m not prepared to say that because total Isolation is bad, total Unification is good. The extremes may both be equally horrible, and an old-fashioned Galactic Empire, however imperfect, may be the best we can do.”
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,
