Ive been reading a lot of sci-fi lately and have come across some quotes that I found interesting, so I started noting some of the more meaningful (or humorous) ones that seemed significant to me.
"Such folly smacks of genius. A lesser mind would be incapable of it." Isaac Asimov (Foundation 73)
Someone proposed that the Foundation just wait until the vault opens to find out how to solve their political crisis (which has the right history predicted for them through the invented science of psychohistory), and Salvor Hardin, who was the mayor of the Foundation at the time, replied with this quote. Sometimes people can be this way in my experience and this quote seems to epitomize those situations.
"It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety." Isaac Asimov (Foundation 95)
Hardin, who was known in Foundation for making epigrammatic statements, operated under this idea to gain the upper hand over a country with infinitely greater military strength, but with lesser knowledge of technology.
"Religion is one of the great civilizing influences of history and in that respect, its fulfilling." Isaac Asimov (Foundation 112)
Although I am not religious in any way myself, I find wisdom in this statement. As much as religion causes conflict and war, it unites people moreso than any other method of control - and is typically a good thing from the standpoint of morals and values.
"To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well." Isaac Asimov (Foundation 178)
"You've got to have the in-betweens, or you won't understand." Isaac Asimov (Foundation 180)
"Scientific research was much like prospecting : you went out and hunted, armed with your maps and your instruments, but in the end your preparations did not matter, or even your intuition. You needed your luck, and whatever benefits accrued to the diligent, through sheer, grinding hard work." Michael Crichton (The Andromeda Strain 245)
As a current research scientist I can attest to this unfortunate quote of wisdom.
"Like many intelligent men, Stone took a rather suspicious attitude towards his own brain, which he saw as a precise and skilled but temperamental machine. He was never surprised when the machine failed to perform, though he feared those moments, and hated them." Michael Crichton (The Andromeda Strain 259)
"True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information" Winston Churchill
"Nothing is ever as simple in the concrete as it is in the abstract." Robert J. Sawyer (The Terminal Experiment 102)
"To use what Sarkar and I are doing as an example: we've created models of my mind. Models, that's all. Simulacra that seem to operate the same way as the original. But when a real person builds a relationship with somebody else, are they in fact really having a relationship with that person, or just with a model - an image, an ideal - that they've built up in their own mind?" Robert J. Sawyer (The Terminal Experiment 152)
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