Science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
I’m forty-nine, not fifteen, and I’ve made my peace with myself. Had I been handsome and stupid when I was fifteen, or twenty-one, as, at that time in life, I wished I had been, I would undoubtedly now no longer be handsome – but I’d still be stupid. So, in the long run, I’ve won out.
Anything could be found in figures if the search were long enough and hard enough and if the proper pieces of information were ignored or overlooked.
Actions such as his could come only from a robot, or from a very honorable and decent human being. But you see, you can’t differentiate between a robot and the very best of humans.
There’s no way we can raise a positronic brain one inch above the level of perfect materialism. “We can’t, damn it, we can’t. Not as long as we don’t understand what makes our own brains tick. Not as long as things exist that science can’t measure. 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.
The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are absolute; that everything that isn’t perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong.
Here were the same long cold bare corridors, the same lowest common denominator of design and decoration, with every light source designed so as to irritate as few people as possible and to please just as few.
It seems to me that only someone who wishes for freedom can be free. I wish for freedom.
The Scientist – with capital letters and no smile.
What we gain in the straightaways, we lose in the roundabouts. That’s the way the universe works. We’ve just got to fool it somehow.
His name was Gaal Dornick and he was just a country boy who had never seen Trantor before. That is, not in real life. He had seen it many times on the hyper- video, and occasionally in tremendous three- dimensional newscasts covering an Imperial Coronation or the opening of a Galactic Council. Even though he had lived all his life on the world of Synnax, which circled a star at the edges of the Blue Drift, he was not cut off from civilization, you see. At that time, no place in the Galaxy was.
You see, I have cowardly feelings, but I try not to make cowardly decisions.
Nowadays, of course, we are taught that the flat-Earth theory is wrong; that it is all wrong, absolutely. But it isn’t. The curvature of the Earth is nearly 0 per mile, so that although the flat-Earth theory is wrong, it happens to be nearly right. That’s why the theory lasted so long.
You are never too old to learn more than you already know and to become able to do more than you already can.
But people who are capable of thinking clearly are in a minority, of course.
I like you two. You’re inferior creatures, with poor reasoning faculties, but I really feel a sort of affection for you. You have served the Master well, and he will reward you for that. Now that your service is over, you will probably not exist much longer, but as long as you do, you shall be provided food, clothing and shelter, so long as you stay out of the control room and the engine room.
It is the essence of a good title, in my opinion, that it means more after you have completed the story than before you started it. If that is not true, then either the title or the story, or both, is trivial.
Ever since Alexander went to India, Greek kings used elephants in war, mainly for prestige. They were rarely any use. Unlike horses, they were far too intelligent to risk injury merely at a man’s urging. It was easy to panic elephants to hastily retreat, trampling their own army.
Let us assume you’ve made your point.
Even as though dearest with th en humble and defenseless, thus shalt though be dealt with.