It was a sign of decaying culture, of course, that dams had been built against the further development of ideas.
So far, scientists have not uncovered any evidence that would hint that the workings of the Universe require the action of a divine being. On the other hand, scientists have uncovered no evidence that indicates that a divine being does not exist.
Where history concerns mainly personalities, the drawings become either black or white according to the interests of the writer.
I shall not be alive a half decade hence,” said Seldon, “and yet it is of overpowering concern to me. Call it idealism. Call it an identification of myself with that mystical generalization to which we refer by the term, ’man.
Since I do not believe in so many things, it is not difficult for me to disbelieve in the Fall as well, so that I am entirely convinced I will be telling the truth to the people.
Consider the question suitably modified.
What was the first thing a man must do before he can be a man? He must be born. He must leave the womb; and once left, it could not be re-entered.
Often, one compensates by playing an instrument, or going hiking, or joining some club. In other words, one creates a new type of society, when not working, in which one can feel more at home.
Throughout you have invariably relied on authority or on the past – never on yourselves.
If you’re born in a cubicle and grow up in a corridor, and work in a cell, and vacation in a crowded sun-room, then coming up into the open with nothing but sky over you might just give you a nervous breakdown. They make the children come up here once a year, after they’re five. I don’t know if it does any good. They don’t get enough of it, really, and the first few times they scream themselves into hysteria. They ought to start as soon as they’re weaned and have the trip once a week.
The City was the acme of efficiency, but it made demands of its inhabitants. It asked them to live in a tight routine and order their lives under a strict and scientific control.
For what could any Entity, conscious of eternal existence, want – but an end?
Psychohistory was the quintessence of sociology; it was the science of human behavior reduced to mathematical equations. The individual human being is unpredictable, but the reactions of human mobs, Seldon found, could be treated statistically.
Men identified themselves with the Century with which they were associated professionally. Its battles, all too often, became their own battles.
It’s a worship of the past. It’s a deterioration – a stagnation!
Schiller. A German dramatist of three centuries ago. In a play about Joan of Arc, he said, ‘Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.’ I’m no god and I’ll contend no longer.
Through hyper-space, that unimaginable region that was neither space nor time, matter nor energy, something nor nothing, one could traverse the length of the Galaxy in the interval between two neighboring instants of time.
You can’t maintain discipline that way.” Mallow said icily, “I can. There’s no merit in discipline under ideal circumstances. I’ll have it in the face of death, or it’s useless.
It is as much my job to prevent harm to mankind as a whole as yours is to prevent harm to man as an individual.
Every human being lived behind an impenetrable wall of choking mist within which no other but he existed.