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f58117a
|
Stoop, then, or you will be beaten to your knees. Stoop voluntarily, and you may save a remnant. You have depended on metal and power and they have sustained you as far as they could. You have ignored mind and morale and they have failed you.
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psychohistory
power
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Isaac Asimov |
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e5f583b
|
You're surrounded by people in the waking period, and you feel their eyes and their hopes on you. You can't stand up under it. In the sleep period, you're free.
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Isaac Asimov |
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f54cce9
|
Oh, hell! I can't sleep!" "Neither can I! But I might as well try--as a matter of principle." Twelve hours later, sleep was still just that--a matter of principle, unattainable in practice."
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Isaac Asimov |
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b9a5390
|
All right, Schwartz, tackle my mind now. Go as deep as you want. I was born on Baronn in the Sirius Sector. I lived my life in an atmosphere of anti-Terrestrialism in the formative years, so I can't help what flaws and follies lie at the roots of my subconscious. But look on the surface and tell me if, in my adult years, I have not fought bigotry in myself. Not in others; that would be easy. But in myself, and as hard as I could.
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Isaac Asimov |
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002333b
|
The Imperial forces must keep their hands off, but they find that they can do much even so. Each sector is encouraged to be suspicious of its neighbors. Within each sector, economic and social classes are encouraged to wage a kind of war with each other. The result is that all over Trantor it is impossible for the people to take united action. Everywhere, the people would rather fight each other than make a common stand against the central ..
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politics
revolution
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
469c9ed
|
and he wreaked havoc among the buttered toast as he said it.
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Isaac Asimov |
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6264bc3
|
You'll have such proof as exists. You are the only one responsible for your own wants.
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Isaac Asimov |
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44a417b
|
And Elvex said, "I was the man." - In "Robot dreams" (Short story)"
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science-fiction
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
f7fe75d
|
Yet because they did not know one another, and could not understand one another, and dared not trust one another, and felt from infancy the terrors and insecurity of that ultimate isolation -- there was the hunted fear of man for man, the savage rapacity of man toward man
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Isaac Asimov |
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6b4a773
|
I'm being accused of modesty, a horrible and thoroughly unnatural crime.
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Isaac Asimov |
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610353c
|
The thanks of a weak one are but of little value," he muttered, "but you have them, for truly, in this past week, little but scraps have come my way- and for all my body is small, yet is my appetite unseemly great."
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magnifico
appreciation
thanks
thankfulness
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
daca3a4
|
The fall of Trantor," said Seldon, "cannot be stopped by any conceivable effort. It can be hastened easily, however. The tale of my interrupted trial will spread through the Galaxy. Frustration of my plans to lighten the disaster will convince people that the future holds no promise to them. Already they recall the lives of their grandfathers with envy. They will see that political revolutions and trade stagnations will increase. The feelin..
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Isaac Asimov |
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cba997a
|
There are degrees of justice, Elijah. When the lesser is incompatable with the greater, the lesser must give way.
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Isaac Asimov |
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6d0aba5
|
A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
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Isaac Asimov |
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419efe5
|
Down--down--the results can be followed; and all the suffering that humanity ever knew can be traced to the one fact that no man in the history of the Galaxy, until Hari Seldon, and very few men thereafter, could really understand one another. Every human being lived behind an impenetrable wall of choking mist within which no other but he existed. Occasionally there were the dim signals from deep within the cavern in which another man was l..
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Isaac Asimov |
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fe769b0
|
it suddenly seems to me that the destruction of what should not be, that is, the destruction of what you people call evil, is less just and desirable than the conversion of this evil into what you call good.
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Isaac Asimov |
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bc28a8a
|
He didn't believe that, surely." "Of course not! But he had to pretend he did, as otherwise he would have had no choice but to be insulted. And since there would be nothing he could do about that, being insulted would only lead to humiliation. And since he didn't want that, the simplest path to follow was to believe what I said."
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|
willful-ignorance
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
2d26d66
|
Kill us in the clear light on the Moon, where the sky is black and soft, where the stars shine brightly, where the cleanliness and purity of vacuum make all things sharp. - Not in this low-clinging, fuzzy blue.
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Isaac Asimov |
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7883938
|
What do you require to exchange your ideas for mine?" "You think my convictions are for sale?" "Why not?" came the cold response. "Isn't that your business, buying and selling?" "Only at a profit," said Mallow," --
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Isaac Asimov |
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26dac7e
|
When everything impossible had been eliminated and what remains is supernatural, then someone is lying.
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|
scepticism
rationality
evidence
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
c2ce85c
|
It amounts to a diseased attitude--a conditioned reflex that shunts aside the independence of your minds whenever it is a question of opposing authority.
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Isaac Asimov |
|
19857d0
|
It isn't just you. It's the whole Galaxy. Pirenne heard Lord Dorwin's idea of scientific research. Lord Dorwin thought the way to be a good archaeologist was to read all the books on the subject--written by men who were dead for centuries. He thought that the way to solve archaeological puzzles was to weigh the opposing authorities. And Pirenne listened and made no objections. Don't you see that there's something wrong with that?
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Isaac Asimov |
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67874c6
|
The psychohistoric trend of a planet-full of people contains a huge inertia. To be changed it must be met with something possessing a similar inertia. Either as many people must be concerned, or if the number of people be relatively small, enormous time for change must be allowed.
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Isaac Asimov |
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ac42fd5
|
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.
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|
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
4d8637e
|
I don't know. How did Beethoven hear the Ninth Symphony in his head before he wrote it down? The brain's a pretty good computer, too, isn't it?
|
|
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
c355052
|
There is a longing for a supposedly simple and virtuous past that is almost universal among the people of a complex and vicious society.
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|
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
5aba6d5
|
Often, this has only meant a change in tyranny. In other words, one ruling class is replaced by another--sometimes by one that is more efficient and therefore still more capable of maintaining itself--while the poor and downtrodden remain poor and downtrodden or become even worse off.
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Isaac Asimov |
|
c3775f6
|
Perasa autes tis duo meres exetazontas entatika ton eauto mou", eipe o Kiouti, "kai ta sumperasmata etan polu endiapheronta. Arkhisa apo ten mone bebaie upothese pou nomiza oti mporousa na kano. Ego o idios uparkho, epeide skeptomai". O Paouel anastenaxe: "O, Thee mou,o Kartesios rompot"."
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|
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
9ac9f4a
|
We face eternity now. We have no universe left, no outside phenomena, no emotions, no passions. Nothing but ourselves and thought. We face an eternity of introspection, when all through history we have never known what to do with ourselves on a rainy Sunday.
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Isaac Asimov |
|
0f2fff8
|
Could he tell her any of this? Of course not. Could he tell her that women almost never qualified for Eternity because, for some reason he did not understand (Computers might, but he himself certainly did not), their abstraction from Time was from ten to a hundred times as likely to distort Reality as was the abstraction of a man.
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|
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
0c6eca0
|
The theory of universal gravitation is not cast-iron. No theory is, and there is always room for improvement. Isn't that so? Science is constructed out of approximations that gradually approach the truth. . . Well, that means all theories are subject to constant testing and modification, doesn't it? And if it eventually turns out that they're not quite close enough to the truth, they need to be replaced by something that's closer. Right?
|
|
scientific-paradigm
scientific-method
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
d96d2f4
|
Every man's position on Earth is restricted to the distance he can walk.' -- "The Last Trump"
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|
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
2892b4b
|
Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014.
|
|
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
6f09ad0
|
Some readers may realize that this story, first published in 1956, has been overtaken by events. In 1965, astronomers discovered that Mercury does not keep one side always to the Sun, but has a period of rotation of about fifty-four days, so that all parts of it are exposed to the sunlight at one time or another. Well, what can I do except say that I wish astronomers would get things right to begin with? And I certainly refuse to change the..
|
|
the-dying-night
asimov
isaac-asimov
isaac
science-fiction
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
7d60330
|
The real point of the matter is that what we call a 'wrong datum' is one which is inconsistent with all other known data. It is our only criterion for right and wrong.
|
|
right-and-wrong
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
b8e0e1d
|
For the first time the specific and express thought came to him. And though he pushed it away in horror, he knew that, having once come, it would return. The thought was simply this: That he would ruin Eternity, if he had to. The worst of it was that he knew he had the power to do it.
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|
Isaac Asimov |
|
20b65ec
|
The pleasantness of their company outweighed the regret of their passing. On the whole, then, it is better to experience what you experience now than not to.
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|
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
7e6173a
|
Consider the question suitably modified.
|
|
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
f4c33f7
|
The analysis was the most difficult of the three by all odds. When Holk, after two days of steady work, succeeded in eliminating meaningless statements, vague gibberish, useless qualifications - in short, all the goo and dribble - he found he had nothing left. Everything cancelled out. Lord Dorwin, gentlemen, in five days of discussion didn't say one damned thing, and said it so you never noticed.
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|
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
4d2a8cc
|
the rotten tree-trunk, until the very moment when the storm-blast breaks it in two, has all the appearance of might it ever had.
|
|
asimov
foundation
rotten
tree
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
33acc95
|
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.
|
|
thoughtful-reflection
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
ae37482
|
Pierre Curie, a brilliant scientist, happened to marry a still more brilliant one--Marie, the famous Madame Curie--and is the only great scientist in history who is consistently identified as the husband of someone else.
|
|
history
marie-curie
marie-skłodowska-curie
nobel-prize
pierre-curie
nobel-laureate
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
9f54a3e
|
She possesses what someone once described to me as all the unlovable virtues.
|
|
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
0304927
|
It's one thing to predict [the complete breakdown of civilization]. It's something else again to be right in the middle of it. It's a very humbling thing...for an academic like me to find his abstract theories turning into concrete reality... It was all just so many words to me, really, just a philosophical exercise, completely abstract.
|
|
scientific-abstraction
|
Isaac Asimov |