# Quote — Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

> To him, a stilted geometric love of arrangement was “system,” an indefatigable and feverish interest in the pettiest facets of day-to-day bureaucracy was “industry,” indecision when right was “caution,” and blind stubbornness when wrong, “determination.”

- Author: [Isaac Asimov](https://www.leafyquotes.com/isaac-asimov.md)
- Book: [Foundation and Empire](https://www.leafyquotes.com/isaac-asimov/foundation-and-empire.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov#Foundation_and_Empire_(1952)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Topics: [character](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/character.md)
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/isaac-asimov/foundation-and-empire/to-him-a-stilted

## More from this book

> “When the twenty-seven independent Trading Worlds, united only by their distrust of mother planet of the Foundation, concert an assembly among themselves, and each is big with a pride grown of its smallness, hardened by its own insularity and embittered by eternal danger — there are preliminary negotiations to be overcome of a pettiness sufficiently staggering to heart-sicken the most persevering.”

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/isaac-asimov/foundation-and-empire/when-the-twenty-seven.md)

Topics: [politics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics.md)

> It is well-known that the friend of a conqueror is but the last victim.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/isaac-asimov/foundation-and-empire/it-is-well-known.md)

Topics: [power](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/power.md)

> 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.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/isaac-asimov/foundation-and-empire/it-is-the.md)

Topics: [time](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/time.md)