Quotes from Isaac Asimov

He started blindly but within a month he had that feeling that every scientist recognizes—the endless click-click as unexpected pieces fall into place, as annoying anomalies become anomalous no more—It was the feel of Truth.

No puede esperarse que el Universo respete las emociones humanas. Envejecerá y morirá sin consideración alguna para con los lamentos del hombre, y sus componentes seguirán alejándose unos de otros en un proceso de eterna expansión incluso después de que las galaxias se hayan consumido hasta convertirse en cenizas de enanas blancas.

It merely required the use of that much-neglected commodity—common sense. You see, there is a branch of human knowledge known as symbolic logic, which can be used to prune away all sorts of clogging deadwood that clutters up human language.

Through the development of the mathematics necessary to understand the facts of neural physiology and the electrochemistry of the nervous system, which themselves had to be, had to be, traced down to nuclear forces, it first became possible to truly develop psychology.

A fleet of ships greater in number than all the war fleets the Empire had ever supported landed their cargoes on Trantor each day to feed the forty billions of humans who gave nothing in exchange but the fulfilment of the necessity of untangling the myriads of threads that spiralled into the central administration of the most complex government Humanity had ever known.

Cuándo puede saber un hombre que no es un títere?

That's why the Periphery is revolting; that's why communications are breaking down; that's why petty wars are becoming eternal; that's why whole systems are losing nuclear power and going back to barbarous techniques of chemical power.

Il modo più semplice di risolvere un problema è negare che esista.

sector weren't knocked over with compressed-air pistols. Jael, they're getting ships from the Empire itself. Don't open your mouth like a fool. I said the Empire! It's still there, you know. It may be gone here in the Periphery but in the Galactic centre it's still very much alive. And one false move means that it, itself, may be on our neck. That's why I must be mayor and high priest. I'm the only man who knows how to fight the crisis.

por mucho que

We can see, now, that the social background of the Empire makes wars of conquest impossible for it. Under weak Emperors, it is torn apart by generals competing for a worthless and surely death-bringing throne. Under strong Emperors, the Empire is frozen into a paralytic rigour in which disintegration apparently ceases for the moment, but only at the sacrifice of all possible growth.

Recuerda siempre... todo lo que hiciste por mí. -No hice nada por ti. - Me amaste y tu amor me hizo... humana.

For instance, in a book entitled Mathematics and the Imagination (published in 1940) the authors, Edward Kasner and James Newman, introduced a number called the googol, which is good and large and which was promptly taken up by writers of books and articles on popular mathematics. Personally, I think it is an awful name, but the young child of one of the authors invented it, and what could a proud father do? Thus, we are afflicted forever with that baby-talk number.

I once told Riose that not all the Empire's strength could swerve the dead hand of Hari Seldon.

seems to me that the whole essence of Seldon's plan was to create a world better than the ancient one of the Galactic Empire. It was falling apart, that world, three centuries ago, when Seldon first established the Foundation – and if history speaks truly, it was falling apart of the triple disease of inertia, despotism, and maldistribution of the goods of the universe.

Cada uno quiere gran dosis de igualdad para sí..., pero no tanta para los demás». [Hacia la Fundación]

Sin la interdependencia humana, desaparece el principal aliciente que ofrece la vida; se esfuman casi todos los valores intelectuales y falta una auténtica razón para vivir. La visualización no puede sustituir la presencia personal. Incluso los propios solarianos se dan cuenta de que la visualización no es más que un sentido a larga distancia.

Besides, as I sometimes say, "Happiness is doing it rotten your own way.

It was not even necessary to formulate that idea as a specific thought.

I'll admit that this Frankenstein Complex you're exhibiting has a certain justification

It was less respectable because less immediately useful; and it was poorly financed since it was less profitable.

It's almost a century since the last one, and in that century, every vice of the Empire has been repeated in the Foundation. Inertia! Our ruling class knows one law; no change. Despotism! They know one rule; force. Maldistribution! They know one desire; to hold what is theirs.

El Aprendiz tartamudeó: —Brinsley Sheridan Cooper, del Setenta y ocho, señor. Harlan casi experimentó cierta simpatía por el muchacho. Solo diecisiete Siglos de distancia del suyo propio. Eran casi unos vecinos en el Tiempo.

Întreaga ÅŸtiin?? se bazeaz? pe credinÅ£a în anumite premise ÅŸi în valabilitatea deducÅ£iei ÅŸi a inducÅ£iei.