Second Foundation

„Human beings had forgotten that any other form of existence could be.”

„Only secrecy can turn its weakness to strength.”

„The human mind resents control. The ordinary human hypnotist cannot hypnotize a person against his will for that reason.”

„Where history concerns mainly personalities, the drawings become either black or white according to the interests of the writer.”

„Men who rule by tricks of the mind need not necessarily be men in obvious power.”

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

„Most humans can read emotion in a primitive manner by associating it pragmatically with facial expression, tone of voice and so on. A good many animals possess the faculty to a higher degree; they use the sense of smell to a good extent, and the emotions involved are, of course, less complex. Actually, humans are capable of much more, but the faculty of direct emotional contact tended to atrophy with the development of speech a million years back.”

„you advertise what you're trying to hide”

„only a lie that wasn't ashamed of itself could possibly succeed. He also said that nothing had to be true, but everything had to sound true.”

„Speech, originally, was the device whereby Man learned, imperfectly, to transmit the thoughts and emotions of his mind. By setting up arbitrary sounds and combinations of sounds to represent certain mental nuances, he developed a method of communication — but one which in its clumsiness and thick-thumbed inadequacy degenerated all the delicacy of the mind into gross and guttural signaling.”

„both hope and fear are weaknesses.”

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

„A particular event may be infinitesimally probable, but the probability is always greater than zero.”

„Mankind, advances have been made primarily in physical technology; in the capacity of handling the inanimate world about Man. Control of self and society has been left to chance or to the vague gropings of intuitive ethical systems based on inspiration and emotion.”

„You'd never get academic respect, unless you give the whole story.”

„Dominion, loot, glory — pleasant when they are obtained, but the process of obtaining them is often risky and always unpleasant. The first fine flush may not last.”

„It is never advisable to disturb the superstitions with which a planet is held.”

„That's the trouble with people; they just don't remember.”

„History plays no favorites.”

„all life is a series of accidents, to be met with by improvisations”

„If it's something you can't help, why hurt yourself over it?”

„It's always easy to explain the unknown by postulating a superhuman and arbitrary will.”

„We must know not only how to win, but whom to defeat.”

„If one is searching for an unconquerable menace, one would scarcely look among the enemies already conquered.”

„When can a man know he is not a puppet? How can a man know he is not a puppet?”