Foundation and Empire Quotes

“Society is much more easily soothed than one's own conscience.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of physics, and if the probabilities of error are greater, it is only because history does not deal with as many humans as physics does atoms, so that individual variations count for more.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“The human mind works at low efficiency. Twenty percent is the figure usually given. When, momentarily, there is a flash of greater power, it is termed a hunch, or insight, or intuition.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“For a wise man, I have been told, once said, ‘Gratitude is best and most effective when it does not evaporate in empty phrases.’ But alas, my lady, I am but a mass of empty phrases, it would seem.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“I am afraid a monster is grown that will devour all of us. Yet we must fight him.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“Pyscho-history dealt not with man, but with man-masses. It was the science of mobs; mobs in their billions. It could forecast reactions to stimuli with something of the accuracy that a lesser science could bring to the forecast of a rebound of a billiard ball. The reaction of one man could be forecast by no known mathematics; the reaction of a billion is something else again.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“Married life had taught him the futility of arguing with a female in a dark-brown mood.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“It is the invariable lesson to humanity that distance in time, and in space as well, lends focus.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“And so it happened, that when others bent their knee, he refused and added loudly that his ancestors in their time bowed no knee to any stinking mayor. And in his ancestors’ time the mayor was elected anyhow, and kicked out at will, and that the only people that inherited anything by right of birth were the congenital idiots.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“There's probably no one so easily bribed, but he lacks even the fundamental honesty of honorable corruption. He doesn't stay bribed; not for any sum.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“Every vice of the Empire has been repeated in the Foundation. Inertia! Our ruling class knows one law; no
change. Despotism! They know one rule; force. Maldistribution! They know one desire; to hold what is
theirs.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“I'll take that challenge. It's a dead hand against a living will.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“After all, the essential point in running a risk is that the returns justify it.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“To him, a stilted geometric love of arrangement was “system,” and indefatigable and feverish interest in the pettiest facets of day-to-day bureaucracy was “industry”, indecision when right was “caution”, and blind stubbornness when wrong, “determination.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“Were I to use the wits the good Spirits gave me,” he said, “then I would say this lady can not exist - for what sane man would hold a dream to be reality. Yet rather would I not be sane and lend belief to charmed, enchanted eyes.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“Gratitude is best and most effective when it does not evaporate itself in empty phrases.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“Where the stars are scattered thinly,' quoted Barr, 'And the cold of space seeps in.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“the only people that inherited anything by right of birth were the congenital idiots.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“I’m being accused of modesty, a horrible and thoroughly unnatural crime.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“That is, he made boasts. But boasts are wind and deeds are hard.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“You’re surrounded by people in the waking period, and you feel their eyes and their hopes on you. You can’t stand up under it. In the sleep period, you’re free.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“Even Magnifico was put to work on the calculating machine for routine computations, a type of work, which, once explained, was a source of great amusement to him and at which he was surprisingly proficient.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“Why, they are so sure of themselves that they do not even hurry. They move slowly, phlegmatically; they speak of necessary centuries. They swallow worlds at leisure; creep through systems with dawdling complacence.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“The thanks of a weak one are but of little value," he muttered, "but you have them, for truly, in this past week, little but scraps have come my way- and for all my body is small, yet is my appetite unseemly great.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“Come, captain, we had no leadership worthy of the name then, and we faced the cleverest opponent, the heaviest armor, the strongest force of all. Yet we won by the inevitability of history.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“The Foundation has secrets. They have books, old books - so old that the language they are in is only known to a few of the top men. But the secrets are shrouded in ritual and religion, and may use them.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“The thought-pattern evoked has religious characteristics, and you know what that means." "Not a bit." Mis was not enthusiastic about the necessity of explanation. He never was. So he growled, stared at the long cigar he rolled thoughtfully between his fingers and said, "Characterized by strong faith reactions. Beliefs can't be shaken short of a major shock, in which case, a fairly complete mental disruption results. Mild cases-hysteria, morbid sense of insecurity. Advanced cases – madness and suicide.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“Excellence, he is known as the Mule. He is spoken of little, in a factual sense, but I have gathered the scraps and fragments of knowledge and winnowed out the most probable of them. He is apparently a man of neither birth nor standing. His father, unknown. His mother, dead in childbirth. His upbringing, that of a vagabond. His education, that of the tramp worlds, and the backwash alleys of space. He has no name other than that of the Mule, a name reportedly applied by himself to himself, and signifying, by popular explanation, his immense physical strength, and stubbornness of purpose.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“He’s but a windlet that blows the dust about my ankles. There is another that I flee, and he is a storm that sweeps the worlds aside and throws them plunging at each other.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“The clown’s eyes sidled towards her, then drew away quickly. “But they kept me away from you earlier-and, on my word, you may laugh, but I was lonely for missing friendship.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire