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Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.

To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.

If you're born in a cubicle and grow up in a corridor, and work in a cell, and vacation in a crowded sun-room, then coming up into the open with nothing but sky over you might just give you a nervous breakdown.

It was childish to feel disappointed, but childishness comes almost as naturally to a man as to a child.

Now any dogma, based primarily on faith and emotionalism, is a dangerous weapon to use on others, since it is almost impossible to guarantee that the weapon will never be turned on the user.

Scientific truth is beyond loyalty and disloyalty.

It is the chief characteristic of the religion of science that it works.

The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity—a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop.

I wanted to be a psychological engineer, but we lacked the facilities, so I did the next best thing - I went into politics. It's practically the same thing.

Any fool can tell a crisis when it arrives. The real service to the state is to detect it in embryo.

Past glories are poor feeding.

A fire-eater must eat fire even if he has to kindle it himself.

It is remarkable, Hardin, how the religion of science has grabbed hold.

Childishness comes almost as naturally to a man as to a child.

The Three Theorems of Psychohistorical Quantitivity: The population under scrutiny is oblivious to the existence of the science of Psychohistory. The time periods dealt with are in the region of 3 generations. The population must be in the billions (±75 billions) for a statistical probability to have a psychohistorical validity.

You mean that this is a matter of patriotism and traders aren't patriotic?" "Notoriously not. Pioneers never are.

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.

Scientific method, hell! No wonder the Galaxy was going to pot.

Don't you see? It's Galaxy-wide. It's a worship of the past. It's a deterioration - a stagnation!.

Whereupon the man laughed loudly and replied, ‘Never!’ and applied the spurs with a will.

Lord Dorwin, gentlemen, in five days of discussion didn’t say one damned thing, and said it so you never noticed.

Fighting and scars are part of a trader's overhead. But fighting is only useful when there's money at the end, and if I can get it without, so much the sweeter.

They were scientists enough to admit that they were wrong.