Quotes About Empire

Pero su meta no era ganar. Ni siquiera estaba claro qué significaba ganar. Su meta era sólo perturbar al mundo musulmán y ponerlo en contra de sí mismo, para que no emergiera un imperio islámico.

The European peninsula was occupied by the United States and the Soviet Union, its sovereignty compromised. Over the next decades its empire would disintegrate and its global power disappear.

At the height of the British Empire, Lord Palmerston said, "It is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.

The United States has little reason to build an empire for economic and trade purposes. It exports only 13 percent of its GDP to the world, compared with Germany, which exports almost 50 percent, or China's exports in excess of 20 percent of GDP.

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.

All roads lead to Trantor, and that is where all stars end.

Every vice of the Empire has been repeated in the Foundation. Inertia! Our ruling class knows one law; no change. Despotism! They know one rule; force. Maldistribution! They know one desire; to hold what is theirs.

Mr. Advocate, the rotten tree-trunk, until the very moment when the storm-blast breaks it in two, has all the appearance of might it ever had. The storm-blast whistles through the branches of the Empire even now. Listen with the ears of psychohistory, and you will hear the creaking.

From the radiating point of Siwenna, the forces of the Empire reached out cautiously into the black unknown of the Periphery. Giant ships passed the vast distances that separated the vagrant stars at the Galaxy's rim, and felt their way around the outermost edge of Foundation influence.

Riose laughed suddenly. He foresaw that? Then he foresaw wrong, my good scientist. I suppose you call yourself that. Why, the Empire is more powerful now than it has been in a millennium. Your old eyes are blinded by the cold bleakness of the border. Come to the inner worlds some day; come to the warmth and the wealth of the center.

We can see, now, that the social background of the Empire makes wars of conquest impossible for it. Under weak Emperors, it is torn apart by generals competing for a worthless and surely death-bringing throne. Under strong Emperors, the Empire is frozen into a paralytic rigor in which disintegration apparently ceases for the moment, but only at the sacrifice of all possible growth.

So it is only the combination of strong Emperor and strong general that can harm the Foundation; for a strong Emperor cannot be dethroned easily, and a strong general is forced to turn outwards, past the frontiers.

But it was more than a planet; it was the living pulse beat of an Empire of twenty million stellar systems. It had only one, function, administration; one purpose, government; and one manufactured product, law.

Here in the Periphery they've lost nuclear power. In Gamma Andromeda, a power plant has undergone meltdown because of poor repairs, and the Chancellor of the Empire complains that nuclear technicians are scarce. And the solution? To train new ones? Never! Instead they're to restrict nuclear power." And for the third time: "Don't you see? It's Galaxy-wide. It's a worship of the past. It's a deterioration—a stagnation!

And then—U. S. Robots has interstellar travel, and humanity has the opportunity for galactic empire.

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

In fact, no one noticed that the Empire had lost its drive, its forward look, because Trantor gleamed in shining metal.

THE FOUNDATION NOVELS Prelude to Foundation Foundation Foundation and Empire Second Foundation Foundation's Edge Forward the Foundation

la caída del imperio, caballeros, es algo monumental y no puede combatirse fácilmente. Está dictada por una burocracia en aumento, una recesión de la iniciativa, una congelación de las castas, un estancamiento de la curiosidad… y muchos factores más.

commonly known as simply "The Foundation

Devers' eyes were dark with thought. 'You want the Empire to win?' And the old Siwennian patrician broke out in sudden deep anger. 'May the Empire and all its works perish in universal catastrophe. All Siwenna prays that daily. I had brothers once, a sister, a father. But I have children now, grandchildren. The general knows where to find them.

The Foundation, as he says, was established as a scientific refuge – the means by which the science and culture of the dying Empire was to be preserved through the centuries of barbarism that have begun, to be rekindled in the end into a second Empire.

We won't make the mistake of excessive greed. We shall inch our way to empire—and those who stand in our way shall be dubbed warmongers.

The image of Hari Seldon reached into open air and the book once more appeared in his hand. He opened it and said: "But whatever devious course your future history may take, impress it always upon your descendants that the path has been marked out, and that at its end is a new and greater Empire!