You are makeshift.
The elevator was of the new sort that ran by gravitic repulsion. Gaal entered and others flowed in behind him. The operator closed a contact. For a moment, Gaal felt suspended in space as gravity switched to zero, and then he had weight again in small measure as the elevator accelerated upward. Deceleration followed and his feet left the floor. He squawked against his will. The operator called out, “Tuck your feet under the railing. Can’t you read the sign?
We naturally see our virtues with clearer eyes than we see our defects.
There’s no question of your working out the entire future of the Galactic Empire, you know. You needn’t trace out in detail the workings of every human being or even of every world. There are merely certain questions you must answer: Will the Galactic Empire crash and, if so, when? What will be the condition of humanity afterward? Can anything be done to prevent the crash or to ameliorate conditions afterward? These are comparatively simple questions, it seems to me.
If we are always to draw back from change with the thought that the change may be for the worse, then there is no hope at all of ever escaping injustice.
The only trouble is,” said the Sister happily, “that every once in a while you have a very unusual one and you never forget it, but you never have it again either. I had one when I was nine – ” Her expression suddenly lost its excitement and she said, “It’s a good thing. It teaches you the evanescence of things of the world.
Chen said, “Dr. Seldon, you disturb the peace of the Emperor’s realm. None of the quadrillions living now among all the stars of the Galaxy will be living a century from now. Why, then, should we concern ourselves with events of three centuries distance?
It’s a weakness of mine-I want people to understand me.
You underestimate the depths to which mysticism can bury rationality, Golan.
But I’d be killed, and I never like to count on that when I’m making plans. It doesn’t pay off.
Get this,” the Trader spoke forcefully and earnestly, “there are five or six fat slobs who usually run an average planet. They get the rabbit punch, but I’m not losing peace of mind over them. See. The people? The ordinary run of guys? Sure, some get killed, and the rest pay extra taxes for a while. But it settles itself out; it runs itself down. And then it’s the old situation again with a different five or six.
It is an affair of a romantic idiot; but even a romantic idiot can be a deadly weapon when an unromantic rebel uses him as a tool.
Common belief, even universal belief, is not, in itself, evidence.
Unfortunately, an uninformed public tends to confuse scholarship with magicianry, and love life seems to be that factor which requires the largest quantity of magical tinkering.
And then again, in a society given over, as that of the First Empire was, to the physical sciences and inanimate technology, there was a vague but mighty sociological push away from the study of the mind. It was less respectable because less immediately useful; and it was poorly financed since it was less profitable.
The young man is handsome, pleasant, and extremely charming. Don’t let him fool you.
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.
Look. I spend my life in space for my five-and-dime gadgets and my beer-and-pretzel kickback from the Combines. There’s fat fellows back there,′ his thumb jerked over his shoulder and back, ’that sit at home and collect my year’s income every minute-out of skimmings from me and more like me. Suppose you run the Foundation. You’ll still need us.
You distrusted the Imperials too. Most human beings do these days, which is an important factor in the decay and deterioration of the Empire.
What is beauty, or goodness, or art, or love, or God? We’re forever teetering on the brink of the unknowable, and trying to understand what can’t be understood. It’s what makes us men.