Quotes from Isaac Asimov

Dr Seldon, that you are speaking of an Empire that has stood for twelve thousand years, through all the vicissitudes of the generations, and which has behind it the good wishes and love of a quadrillion human beings?

Such unsubtle escapism! Really, Dr Fara, such folly smacks of genius. A lesser mind would be incapable of it.

Después de 10 años de matrimonio era todavía lo suficientemente estúpido como para seguir enamorado de ella.

Excellence, we have. Yet Seldon's science is known—only to Seldon. We ourselves have but faith.

There were times when a Rational could be too Rational, and chase down the tracks of every thought to the detriment of what was important.

The Foundation can never lose, but that does not mean the rulers of the Foundation can't.

It is that state of anarchy which my project is pledged to fight. The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity – a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop.

Was I sleeping when you came in?" "You were," said Bayta decisively, "and you're not going back to work, either. You're getting into bed.

Psychohistory, which can predict the fall, can make statements concerning the succeeding dark ages. The Empire, gentlemen, as has just been said, has stood twelve thousand years. The dark ages to come will endure not twelve, but thirty thousand years. A Second Empire will rise, but between it and our civilization will be one thousand generations of suffering humanity. We must fight that.

There will be other crises in the time to come when money power has become as dead a force as religion is now. Let my successors solve those new problems, as I have solved the one of today.

In fact—and he reached up to rub his cheek with long, spare fingers—with the combination of factors you handed me I don't quite see how she fit in the old Reality.

Su misma superioridad lo perdió

En cualquier caso, en la Historia no hay finales felices, solo momentos críticos que se superan.

There's no merit in discipline under ideal circumstances.

a Galaxis a vesztébe rohan!

How did you get on?" he asked slowly, as though gripping each word with his teeth very carefully to prevent it from trembling before letting it out.

La verdad científica está por encima de la lealtad y la deslealtad.

Eliminate the impossible and whatever remained, however improbable, was the truth.

It symbolizes neither one nor the other, but a mixture of the two without priority

Did they know that you had a robot husband?" "I had a husband. Don't call him a robot husband. There is no such expression.

I never thought that, in the sense of believing it. It is merely an alternative to be considered.

He's a low-born rascal who has by unfailing flattery tickled the whims of the Emperor. He's well-hated by the court aristocracy, vermin themselves, because he can lay claim to neither family nor humility. He is the Emperor's adviser in all things, and the Emperor's tool in the worst things. He is faithless by choice but loyal by necessity. There is not a man in the Empire as subtle in villainy or as crude in his pleasures.

A man without weaknesses serves only to make everyone else conscious of his own imperfections. A primitive poet named Tennyson once wrote: 'He is all fault who has no fault at all.' 

Las palabras son un sustituto bastante confuso de las ecuaciones matemáticas.