Second Foundation

The house was somehow very lonely at night and Dr. Darell found that the fate of the Galaxy made remarkably little difference while his daughter's mad little life was in danger.

Remarkable what a fragile flower romance is. A gun with a nervous operator behind it can spoil the whole thing.

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 located — so that each might grope toward the other. 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.

Secrecy as deep as this is past possibility without nonexistence as well.

To us, all life is a series of accidents to be met with improvisations. To them, all life is purposive and should be met with precalculation.

Your emotions are, of course, only the children of your background and are not to be condemned - merely changed.

He never created a finished product. Finished products are for decadent minds.

The spell of power never quite releases its hold.

The most hopelessly stupid man is he who is not aware that he is wise.

One should cultivate an innocence, an awareness of self, and an unselfconsciousness of self which leaves one nothing to hide.

No matter how the conomy and sociology of the neighbouring sectors of the Galaxy changes, there was always an elite; and it is always the characteristic of an elite that it possesses leisure as the great reward of its elite-hood.