The earliest histories were medleys of self-serving heroisms and mini-dramas
that were meant as morality plays and were not to be taken literally.
--Isaac Asimov Prelude
to Foundation
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
--Isaac Asimov Foundation
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for
subtlety.
--Isaac Asimov Foundation
A fire-eater must eat fire even if he has to kindle it himself.
--Isaac Asimov Foundation
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right!
--Isaac Asimov Foundation
To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.
--Isaac Asimov Foundation
Any dogma, primarily based on faith and emotionalism, is a dangerous weapon
to use on others, since it is almost impossible to guarantee that the weapon
will never be turned on the user.
--Isaac Asimov Foundation
It is the invariable lesson to humanity that distance in time, and in space
as well, lends focus. It is not recorded, incidentally, that the lesson has ever
been permanently learned.
--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
Only a lie that wasn't ashamed of itself could possibly succeed.
--Isaac Asimov
Second Foundation
Nothing has to be true, but everything has to sound true.
--Isaac Asimov Second Foundation
The most hopelessly stupid man is he who is not aware that he is wise.
--Isaac Asimov Second Foundation
A particular event may be infinitesimally probable, but the probability is
always greater than zero.
--Isaac Asimov Second Foundation
A person who expects the completely sophisticated and who guards against it
is quite apt never to think of the primitive.
--Isaac Asimov Foundation's
Edge
Anyone who displays a capacity for double-dealing must forever be suspected of
being capable of displaying it again.
--Isaac Asimov Foundation's Edge
The advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of
privacy.
--Isaac Asimov Foundation's Edge
The observer influences the events he observes by the mere act of observing
them or by being there to observe them.
--Isaac Asimov Foundation's Edge
It is its rules that hold society together and bind it into a whole. Is it
such a light thing to disregard the rules for trivial reasons?
--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.
--Isaac Asimov Foundation and
Earth
Superstition always directs action in the absence of knowledge.
--Isaac Asimov Foundation and
Earth
Freedom is nothing if it is not to live as you wish! Exactly as you wish!
--Isaac Asimov Foundation and
Earth
Human beings are very conservative in some ways and virtually never change
numerical conventions once they grow used to them. They even come to mistake
them for laws of nature.
--Isaac Asimov Foundation and
Earth