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181 " The soft bonds of love are indifferent to life and death. They hold through time so that yesterday’s love is part of today’s and the confidence in tomorrow’s love is also part of today’s. And when one dies, the memory lives in the other, and is warm and breathing. And when both die — I almost believe, rationalist though I am — that somewhere it remains, indestructible and eternal, enriching all of the universe by the mere fact that once it existed. "
― Isaac Asimov , It's Been a Good Life
182 " Intuition is the art, peculiar to the human mind, of working out the correct answer from data that is, in itself, incomplete or even, perhaps, misleading. "
― Isaac Asimov , Forward the Foundation (Foundation: Prequel #2)
183 " In the presence of total Darkness, the mind finds it absolutely necessary to create light. "
― Isaac Asimov , Nightfall One
184 " There is no right to deny freedom to any object with a mind advanced enough to grasp the concept and desire the state. "
― Isaac Asimov , The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories
185 " A circle has no end. "
― Isaac Asimov , Second Foundation (Foundation #3)
186 " people sometimes mistake their own shortcomings for those of society and want to fix the Cities because they don’t know how to fix themselves. "
― Isaac Asimov , The Caves of Steel (Robot #1)
187 " Night will always be a time of fear and insecurity, and the heart will sink with the sun. "
― Isaac Asimov , The Stars, Like Dust (Galactic Empire, #1)
188 " Why, he wondered, did so many people spend their lives not trying to find answers to questions—not even thinking of questions to begin with? Was there anything more exciting in life than seeking answers? "
― Isaac Asimov , Prelude to Foundation
189 " Life would be impossible on such a planet. It wouldn't get enough heat and light, and if it rotated there would be total darkness half of every day. There wouldn't be any native inhabitants. You couldn't expect life---which is fundamentally dependent on light---to develop under such extreme conditions of light deprivation. Half of every axial rotation spent in Darkness! No, nothing could exist under conditions like that. "
― Isaac Asimov , Nightfall
190 " I can't bear to hear a human being spoken of with contempt just because of his group identification...It's these respectable people here who create those hooligans out there. "
191 " Pyscho-history dealt not with man, but with man-masses. It was the science of mobs; mobs in their billions. It could forecast reactions to stimuli with something of the accuracy that a lesser science could bring to the forecast of a rebound of a billiard ball. The reaction of one man could be forecast by no known mathematics; the reaction of a billion is something else again. "
― Isaac Asimov , Foundation and Empire (Foundation #2)
192 " The first problem of living is to minimize friction with the crowds that surround you on all sides. "
193 " It is in meeting the great tests that mankind can most successfully rise to great heights. Out of danger and restless insecurity comes the force that pushes mankind to newer and loftier conquests. Can you understand that? Can you understand that in averting the pitfalls and miseries that beset man, Eternity prevents men from finding their own bitter and better solutions, the real solutions that come from conquering difficulty, not avoiding it? "
― Isaac Asimov , The End of Eternity
194 " Childishness comes almost as naturally to a man as to a child "
― Isaac Asimov , Foundation (Foundation, #1)
195 " Author's Note: This story starts with section 6. This is not a mistake. I have my own subtle reasoning. So, just read, and enjoy. "
― Isaac Asimov , The Gods Themselves
196 " Scientific method, hell! No wonder the Galaxy was going to pot. "
197 " The temptation was great to muster what force we could and put up a fight. It's the easiest way out, and the most satisfactory to self-respect--but, nearly invariably, the stupidest. "
198 " You see, proteins, as I probably needn't tell you, are immensely complicated groupings of amino acids and certain other specialized compounds, arranged in intricate three-dimensional patterns that are as unstable as sunbeams on a cloudy day. It is this instability that is life, since it is forever changing its position in an effort to maintain its identity--in the manner of a long rod balanced on an acrobat's nose. "
― Isaac Asimov , Pebble in the Sky (Galactic Empire #3)
199 " all the suffering that humanity ever knew can be traced to the one fact that no man in the history of the Galaxy, until Hari Seldon, and very few men thereafter, could really understand one another. 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. "
200 " Don't you see? It's Galaxy-wide. It's a worship of the past. It's a deterioration - a stagnation! "