Foundation and Earth Quotes

“Where is the world whose people don't prefer a comfortable, warm, and well-worn belief, however illogical, to the chilly winds of uncertainty?”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“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.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“We mythologists know very well that myths and legends contain borrowings, moral lessons, nature cycles, and a hundred other distorting influences, and we labor to cut them away and get to what might be a kernel of truth. In fact, these same techniques must be applied to the most sober histories, for no one writes the clear and apparent truth—if such a thing can even be said to exist.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“Presumably, such is the folly of human beings, the prospects of intellectual suicide might not stop them from indulging their hatred,”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“There are always individuals who pit their minds against the general modes of thought and who are arrogant enough to feel that they alone are right and that the many are wrong.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“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."
Bliss said, "I don't have your pleasant faith in human reason, Pel. It seems to me to be quite conceivable that when a planetary society consists of Isolates, local and even individual concerns might easily by allowed to overcome planetary concerns.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“That is beside the point. 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.” Trevize”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“Every atom in me has a long history during which it may have been part of many living things, including human beings, and during which it may also have spent long periods as part of the sea, or in a lump of coal, or in a rock, or as a portion of the wind blowing upon us.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“We of Solaria alone learned how life was to be lived. We did not herd and flock like animals, as they did on Earth, as they did on other worlds, as they did even on the other Spacer worlds. We lived each alone, with robots to help us, viewing each other electronically as often as we wished, but coming within natural sight of one another only rarely.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“Common belief, even universal belief, is not, in itself, evidence.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“Where is the world whose people don’t prefer a comfortable, warm, and well-worn belief, however illogical, to the chilly winds of uncertainty?”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“Why not? You and I are eccentrics. We’re certainly not typical of the people living on Terminus. As for criminals, that’s a matter of definition. And if criminals are the price we must pay for rebels, heretics, and geniuses, I’m willing to pay it. I demand the price be paid.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“Human beings, in terraforming a world, leave out the thorns and thistles, whatever they may be, and human beings then have to labor to keep the world going. It isn’t a self-supporting organism as Gaia is. It is rather a miscellaneous collection of Isolates and the collection isn’t miscellaneous enough to allow the ecological balance to persist indefinitely. If humanity disappears, and if its guiding hands are removed, the world’s pattern of life inevitably begins to fall apart. The planet unterraforms itself.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“The two known axioms deal with human beings, and they are based on the unspoken axiom that human beings are the only intelligent species in the Galaxy, and therefore the only organisms whose actions are significant in the development of society and history. That is the unstated axiom: that there is only one species of intelligence in the Galaxy and that it is Homo sapiens. If there were ‘something new,’ if there were other species of intelligence widely different in nature, then their behavior would not be described accurately by the mathematics of psychohistory and Seldon’s Plan would have no meaning. Do you see?”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“Bliss had earlier maintained that in terraforming a planet, human beings would establish an unbalanced economy, which they would be able to keep from falling apart only by unending effort. For instance, no Settlers had ever brought with them any of the large predators. Small ones could not be helped. Insects, parasites—even small hawks, shrews, and so on. Those dramatic animals of legend and vague literary accounts—tigers, grizzly bears, orcs, crocodiles? Who would carry them from world to world even if there were sense to it? And where would there be sense to it? It meant that human beings were the only large predators, and it was up to them to cull those plants and animals that, left to themselves, would smother in their own overplenty. And if human beings somehow vanished, then other predators must take their place. But what predators? The most sizable predators tolerated by human beings were dogs and cats, tamed and living on human bounty.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“Superstition always directs action in the absence of knowledge.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“With remarkable reluctance he touched the pink spot again and this time steeled his body for the icy spray. Mild water? He found suds forming on his body and he rubbed hastily here, there, everywhere, judging it to be the wash cycle and suspecting it would not last long. Then came the rinse cycle. Ah, warm— Well, perhaps not warm, but not quite as cold, and definitely feeling warm to his thoroughly chilled body. Then, even as he was considering touching the contact spot again to stop the water, and was wondering how Lizalor had come out dry when there was absolutely no towel or towel-substitute in the place—the water stopped. It was followed by a blast of air that would have certainly bowled him over if it had not come from various directions equally. It was hot; almost too hot. It took far less energy, Trevize knew, to heat air than to heat water. The hot air steamed the water off him and, in a few minutes, he was able to step out as dry as though he had never encountered water in his life.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“Frankly,” said Trevize, “it’s annoying not to know the pronoun to use in connection with the creature. It impedes thought and conversation to hesitate forever at the pronoun.” “But that’s the fault of our language,” said Bliss, “and not of Fallom.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“When you think of human history, you think of the occasional human being whose minority view may be condemned by society but who wins out in the end and changes the world. What chance is there on Gaia for the great rebels of history?”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“All is bad that is imposed from without,’ said Lizalor.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“it may be worth listening to all that scraping, tootling, and banging, for whatever information it might conceivably yield concerning Earth.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“Gaia is just an extension of the desire for comfort and security extended to an entire planet. What’s wrong with that?” “What’s wrong with that,” said Trevize, “is that my house or my ship is engineered to suit me. I am not engineered to suit it. If I were part of Gaia, then no matter how ideally the planet was devised to suit me, I would be greatly disturbed over the fact that I was also being devised to suit it.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“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.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“if you wish to call the truth impossible, that is your privilege, but it will get you nowhere.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“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.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“We naturally see our virtues with clearer eyes than we see our defects.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“En toda la Historia humana, ninguna otra inteligencia nos ha amenazado, que nosotros sepamos. Bastaría con que esto continuase durante unos pocos siglos, tal vez poco más de una milésima del tiempo que llevamos de civilización, para que estuviésemos a salvo. A fin de cuentas –y aquí sintió Trevize una súbita aprensión que se obligó a pasar por alto– no es como si ya tuviésemos al enemigo entre nosotros. Y no bajó la mirada para no encontrarse con los ojos reflexivos de Fallom (hermafrodita, transductora, diferente) que le estaban mirando, fijos, insondables.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“En toda la Historia humana, ninguna otra inteligencia nos ha amenazado, que
nosotros sepamos. Bastaría con que esto continuase durante unos pocos siglos,
tal vez poco más de una milésima del tiempo que llevamos de civilización,
para que estuviésemos a salvo. A fin de cuentas –y aquí sintió Trevize una súbita aprensión que se obligó a pasar por alto– no es como si ya tuviésemos al
enemigo entre nosotros. Y no bajó la mirada para no encontrarse con los ojos
reflexivos de Fallom (hermafrodita, transductora, diferente) que le estaban mirando, fijos, insondables.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“so that one has to say ‘I/we/Gaia’ as an invented pronoun to express the inexpressible.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth

“But I am a Skeptic and I am professionally unattuned to believing in surfaces.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth