Quotes About Society

You distrusted the Imperials too. Most human beings do these days, which is an important factor in the decay and deterioration of the Empire.

Since when does prejudice follow any law but its own.

When you think of human history, you think of the occasional human being whose minority view may be condemned by society but who wins out in the end and changes the world. What chance is there on Gaia for the great rebels of history?

It is one thing to be democratic, quite another to be inconvenienced.

Societies create their own history and tend to wipe out lowly beginnings, either by forgetting them or inventing totally fictitious heroic rescues.

Mankind's future] was always at the mercy of economic and sociological forces it did not understand—at the whims of climate, and the fortunes of war. Now the Machines understand them; and no one can stop them, since the Machines will deal with them as they are dealing with the Society,—having, as they do, the greatest of weapons at their disposal, the absolute control of our economy.

La psicohistoria no trataba del hombre, sino de las masas de hombres. Era la ciencia de las muchedumbres, de miles de millones de personas. Podía prever las reacciones a diferentes estímulos con la misma exactitud que una ciencia menor predecía el rebote de una bola de billar. La reacción de un hombre se podía vaticinar por medio de las matemáticas conocidas, pero la de mil millones era algo distinto

A planet might deteriorate even if human beings existed upon it, if the society were itself abnormal and did not understand the importance of preserving the environment." "Surely," said Pelorat, "such a society would quickly be destroyed. I don't think it would be possible for human beings to fail to understand the importance of retaining the very factors that are keeping them alive.

the credits still go—unproductively—to the armed forces and vital areas of the social good are allowed to deteriorate. That's what I call decay.

Imagine that. Terrible, terrible, the way we have all bent to the yoke; the affection we have for the harness about us.

Pues... la gente que quiere distribuir un poco la riqueza y desea evitar que se concentre en manos que no son las que la producen. ¿Comprende lo que quiero decir?

If we only obey those rules that we think are just and reasonable, then no rule will stand, for there is no rule that some will not think is unjust and unreasonable. And if we wish to push our own individual advantage, as we see it, then we will always find reason to believe that some hampering rule is unjust and unreasonable. What starts, then, as a shrewd trick ends in anarchy and disaster, even for the shrewd trickster, since he, too, will not survive the collapse of society.

commonly known as simply "The Foundation

Any accident involving a robot-driven car would set off another antirobot riot.

It was a low point in history – but it was the end of nationalism. Earth was too small for nations and they began grouping themselves into Regions. It took quite a while. When I was born the United States of America was still a nation and not merely a part of the Northern Region. In fact, the name of the corporation is still "United States Robots—". And the change from nations to Regions, which has stabilized our economy and brought about what amounts to a Golden Age

Once, however, mankind learned to create his own environment, he created a pleasant and stable one, so he just naturally stopped evolving.

And then, when human beings arrive, the robots can be restored to more robotic schemes of behavior.

Remember, you once said, Lije, that 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.

The reaction of one man could be forecast by no known mathematics; the reaction of a billion is something else again.

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.

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.

La religión es una de las grandes influencias civilizadoras de la historia

Aparentemente, las multitudes se manejan más fácilmente que los individuos. Parece una paradoja.

For the first time, the Foundation has been faced, or perhaps, is in the last stages of facing, civil war. Till now, the attacks from without have been adequately beaten off, and inevitably so, according to the strict laws of psycho-history. The attack at present is that of a too-undisciplined outer group of the Foundation against the too-authoritarian central government. The procedure was necessary, the result obvious.