Quotes About Seldon

Undoubtedly his greatest contributions were in the field of psychohistory. Seldon found the field little more than a set of vague axioms; he left it a profound statistical science.… … The best existing authority we have for the details of his life is the biography

Everyone believes it just the same. I mean all this talk about the Prophet Hari Seldon and how he appointed the Foundation to carry on his commandments that there might some day be a return to the Earthly Paradise: and how anyone who disobeys his commandments will be destroyed for eternity. They believe it. I've presided at festivals, and I'm sure they

You feel safe now that Seldon will speak, and you move against us. A month ago you were soft and yielding, when our ships defeated the Mule at Terel. I might remind you, sir, that it is the Foundation Fleet that has been defeated in open battle five times, and that the ships of the Independent Trading Worlds have won your victories for you.

This is a Seldon crisis we're facing, Sutt, and Seldon crises are not solved by individuals but by historic forces. Hari Seldon, when he planned our course of future history, did not count on brilliant heroics but on the broad sweeps of economics and sociology. So the solutions to the various crises must be achieved by the forces that become available to us at the time. "In this case,—trade!

The best existing authority we have for the details of his life is the biography written by Gaal Dornick who, as a young man, met Seldon two years before the great mathematician's death. The story of the meeting …

You're coming to work for him, aren't you?" "Well yes, I'm a mathematician. Why does he predict disaster? What kind of disaster?" "What kind would you think?" "I'm afraid I wouldn't have the least idea. I've read the papers Dr. Seldon and his group have published. They're on mathematical theory." "Yes, the ones they publish." Gaal

It was falling apart, that world, three centuries ago, when Seldon first established the Foundation—and if history speaks truly, it was falling apart of the triple disease of inertia, despotism, and maldistribution of the goods of the universe.

Dr Seldon, that you are speaking of an Empire that has stood for twelve thousand years, through all the vicissitudes of the generations, and which has behind it the good wishes and love of a quadrillion human beings?

Excellence, we have. Yet Seldon's science is known—only to Seldon. We ourselves have but faith.

They'll adjourn the trial and try to come to a private agreement with me." "How do you know?" Seldon said, "I'll be honest. I don't know. It depends on the Chief Commissioner. I have studied him for years. I have tried to analyze his workings, but you know how risky it is to introduce the vagaries of an individual in the psychohistoric equations. Yet I have hopes.

In fact,' said Fara, happily, 'you all seem to forget that Seldon was the greatest psychologist of our time and that he was the founder of our Foundation. It seems reasonable to assume that he used his science to determine the probable course of the history of the immediate future. If he did, as seems likely, I repeat, he would certainly have managed to find a way to warn us of danger and, perhaps, to point out a solution. The Encyclopedia was very dear to his heart, you know.

I once told Riose that not all the Empire's strength could swerve the dead hand of Hari Seldon.

seems to me that the whole essence of Seldon's plan was to create a world better than the ancient one of the Galactic Empire. It was falling apart, that world, three centuries ago, when Seldon first established the Foundation – and if history speaks truly, it was falling apart of the triple disease of inertia, despotism, and maldistribution of the goods of the universe.

But how will I get out? And all at once the door was open--and there was Seldon and behind him his mother. How'd you do that? I said. I opened the door, he said. But how? He shrugged. I pushed. I just pushed. It was open all the time. And that was when I began to bawl and Mrs. Wishnow took me in her arms and said, That's okay. Things like this happen. They can happen to anyone.