Second Foundation

They feared him and obeyed him and, perhaps, even respected him—from a goodly distance. But who could look at him without contempt? Only those he had Converted. And of what value was their artificial loyalty? It lacked flavor. He might have adopted titles, and enforced ritual and invented elaborations, but even that would have changed nothing. Better—or at least, no worse—to simply be the First Citizen—and to hide himself.

• p. 356 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

There was neither bowing, nor kneeling, nor the use of honorifics in private audiences with the Mule. The Mule was merely "First Citizen." He was addressed as "sir." You sat in his presence, and you could turn your back on him if it so happened that you did.

To Han Pritcher this was all evidence of the sure and confident power of the man. He was warmly satisfied with it.

• p. 357 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

"Ebling Mis said [the Second Foundation] kept itself secret. Only secrecy can turn its weakness to strength."

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

The Mule looked up, large eyes sharp and wary ."No. It does exist."

• p. 358 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

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

• p. 359 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

Their loyalty is left intact, but initiative and ingenuity are rubbed out. I'm left with a perfectly normal person, apparently, but one completely useless.

• p. 362 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

We deal here with psychologists—and not merely psychologists. Let us say, rather, scientists with a psychological orientation. That is, men whose fundamental conception of scientific philosophy is pointed in an entirely different direction from all the orientations we know. The "psychology" of scientists brought up among the axioms deduced from the observational habits of physical science has only the vaguest relationships to PSYCHOLOGY.

• p. 363 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

Huxlani, as a regular Fleet man from the days his chin had dripped milk, generally confused authority with specific insignia.

• p. 369 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

"If there was ever any science to History, it has been quite lost in this region of the Galaxy."

Channis grinned broadly, "I know what you mean. Rather barren, isn't it?"

"Not if you enjoy personal chronicles of rulers. Probably unreliable, I should say, in both directions. Where history concerns mainly personalities, the drawings become either black or white according to the interests of the writer. I find it all remarkably useless."

• p. 371 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

Imperial history flowed past the peasants of Rossem.

• p. 374 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

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

• p. 378 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

It was like an immersion in a crowd of children. Their questions were those of utter and disarming wonder. Their eagerness to know was completely irresistible and would not be denied.

• p. 380 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

It was not a case of physical fear. He was not one of those dull-witted, unimaginative men of nerveless meat who were too stupid to ever be afraid—but physical fear he could account for and discount.

• pp. 383-384 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

[Hari Seldon] created his Foundations according to the laws of psychohistory, but who knew better than he that even those laws were relative. He never created a finished product. Finished products are for decadent minds. His was an evolving mechanism and the Second Foundation was the instrument of that evolution.

• p. 395 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

Your despair is pretense. Your fear is not the broad overwhelming that adheres to the destruction of an ideal, but the puny seeping fear of personal destruction.

• p. 396 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

"Your emotions are, of course," said the First Speaker, "only the children of your background and are not to be condemned—merely changed."

• p. 399 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

"And just how," he asked, "did you know it was I he expected[?]"

"Well, who else could it be? He was expecting somebody in so secrety a way, if you know what I mean—and then you come gumping around trying to sneak through windows, instead of walking through the front door the way you would if you had any sense." She remembered a favorite line, and used it promptly. "Men are so stupid!"

• p. 413 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

"And now Arkady, would you be a good little girl and call your father?"

Arcadia bridled. "I'm not a little girl. I think you're very rude—especially when you're asking a favor."

Pelleas Anthor sighed. "Very well. Would you be a good, kind, dear, little old lady, and call your father?"

• p. 414 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

"Why do you think it is stupid to go to windows instead of to doors?"

"Because you advertise what you're trying to hide, silly. If I have a secret, I don't put tape over my mouth and let everyone know I have a secret. I talk just as much as usual, only about something else. Didn't you ever read any of the sayings of Salvor Hardin? He was our first Mayor, you know."

"Yes, I know."

"Well, he used to say that 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. Well, when you come in through a window, it's a lie that's ashamed of itself and it doesn't sound true."

"Then what would you have done?"

"If I had wanted to see my father on top secret business, I would have made his acquaintance openly and seen him about all sorts of strictly legitimate things. And then when everyone knew all about you and connected you with my father as a matter of course, you could be as top secret as you want and nobody would ever think of questioning it."

• pp. 415-416 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

Only a lie that [isn't] ashamed of itself [can] possibly succeed.

• p. 415 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

Nothing [has] to be true, but everything [has] to sound true.

• pp. 415-416 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

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.

Down—down—the results can be followed; and 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.

Feet, for tens of thousands of years, had clogged and shuffled in the mud—and held down the minds which, for an equal time, had been fit for the companionship of the stars.

• p. 418 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

You had hoped you would qualify. You had feared you would not. Actually, both hope and fear are weaknesses. You knew you would qualify and you hesitate to admit the fact because such knowledge might stamp you as cocksure and therefore unfit. Nonsense! The most hopelessly stupid man is he who is not aware that he is wise. It is part of your qualification that you knew you would qualify.

• p. 419 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

"Stop!" The First Speaker was insistent. "You must not say 'never.' That is a lazy slurring over of the facts. [...] A particular event may be infinitesimally probable, but the probability is always greater than zero."

• p. 422 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

A large minority of human beings are mentally equipped to take part in the advance of physical science, and all receive the crude and visible benefits thereof. Only an insignificant minority, however, are inherently able to lead Man through the greater involvements of Mental Science; and the benefits derived therefrom, while longer lasting, are more subtle and less apparent. Furthermore, since such an orientation would lead to the development of a benevolent dictatorship of the mentally best—virtually a higher subdivision of Man—it would be resented and could not be stable without the application of a force which would depress the rest of Mankind to a brute level.

• p. 423 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

"We have only to attract the attention of the enemy to be ruined; and the best way to attract that attention is to assume a false and theatrical security."

(Hah, thought Arcadia, bending over the voices coming—a bit screechily—out of the little box.)

• pp. 426-427 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

In a society given over, as that of the First Empire was, to the physical sciences and inanimate technology, there was a vague but mighty sociological push away from the study of the mind. It was less respectable because less immediately useful; and it was poorly financed since it was less profitable.

• p. 427 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

He was detecting what we—he and I—knew he would detect—that we were not our own masters. And I didn't want to know! I had my self-respect.

• p. 430 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

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

• p. 439 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

[Arcadia] was quite happy about the trip. Uncle Homir didn't the least mind listening to her and it made conversation so much more pleasant when you could talk to a really intelligent person who was serious about what you said.

• p. 441 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

"Wouldn't you rather read a history where they skipped the silly, tragic parts?"

"Yes, I would," Munn assured her, gravely. "But it wouldn't be a fair history, would it, Arkady? You'd never get academic respect, unless you gave the whole story."

"Oh, poof. Who cares about academic respect?" She found him delightful. He hadn't missed calling her Arkady for days. "My novels are going to be interesting and are going to sell and be famous. What's the use of writing books unless you sell them and become well-known? I don't want just some old professors to know me. It's got to be everybody."

Her eyes darkened with pleasure at the thought and she wriggled into a more comfortable position.

• p. 442 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

[Kalgan] was a pleasure world in the sense that it made an industry—and an immensely profitable one, at that—out of amusement.

And it was a stable industry. It was the most stable industry in the Galaxy. When all the Galaxy perished as a civilization, little by little, scarcely a feather's weight of catastrophe fell upon Kalgan. No matter how the economy and sociology of the neighboring sectors of the Galaxy changed, 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.

• p. 443 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

the spell of power never quite releases its hold

• p. 444 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

The current Lord of Kalgan had held that position for five months. He had gained it originally by virtue of his position at the head of the Kalganian navy, and through a lamentable lack of caution on the part of the previous lord. Yet no one on Kalgan was quite stupid eough to go into the question of legitimacy too long or too closely. These things happened, and are best accepted.

Yet that sort of survival of the fittest, in addition to putting a premium on bloodiness and evil, occasionally allowed capability to come to the fore as well. Lord Stetting was competent enough and not easy to manage.

• p. 444 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

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.

• p. 445 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

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

• p. 446 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

[Dr. Darell] knew that he could live only by fighting that vague and fearful enemy that deprived him of the dignity of manhood by controlling his destiny; that made life a miserable struggle against a foreordained end; that made all the universe a hateful and deadly chess game.

Call it sublimation; he, himself did call it that—but the fight gave meaning to his life.

• p. 453 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

It made her furious. In similar situations in the book-films and the videos, the hero foresaw the conclusion, was prepared for it when it came, and she—she just sat there. Anything could happen. Anything! And she just sat there.

• p. 455 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

Mamma railed for most of the time— First, at the incurable obstinacy with which he courted suicide. Then, at the incredible obstinacy with which he refused to allow her to accompany him.

• pp. 482-483 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

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

• p. 493 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)

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

• p. 505 ("The Foundation Trilogy", Easton Press, 2003)