Foundation’s Edge (The Foundation Series: Sequels, Book 1)

by Isaac Asimov

Anyone who displays a capacity for double-dealing must forever be suspected of being capable of displaying it again.’

I presume I was overly concerned with my research. When one’s home has a really excellent computer capable of reaching other computers anywhere in the Galaxy, one scarcely needs to budge, you know.

The Golden Rule of the Second Foundation was, ‘Do nothing unless you must, and when you must act – hesitate.’

‘It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.’

however small the chance of catastrophe might be, if enough people take enough chances, the catastrophe must happen eventually.

‘There’s nothing to it. All you have to do is take a close look at yourself and you will understand everyone else.

You show me someone who can’t understand people and I’ll show you someone who has built up a false image of himself – no offence intended.’

“The closer to the truth, the better the lie, and the truth itself, when it can be used, is the best lie.”’

‘We call it “globocentrism” in anthropology. People have a tendency to take it for granted that they are better than their neighbours; that their culture is older and superior to that of other worlds; that what is good in other worlds has been borrowed from them, while what is bad is distorted or perverted in the borrowing or invented elsewhere.

All humanity could share a common insanity and be immersed in a common illusion while living in a common chaos.

There is no more desire to live past one’s time than to die before it.’