“I'll take that challenge. It's a dead hand against a living will.”

“The Imperial forces must keep their hands off, but they find that they can do much even so. Each sector is encouraged to be suspicious of its neighbors. Within each sector, economic and social classes are encouraged to wage a kind of war with each other. The result is that all over Trantor it is impossible for the people to take united action. Everywhere, the people would rather fight each other than make a common stand against the central tyranny and the Empire rules without having to exert force.”

“I tell you it's deadly when you start thinking your wife might be right.”

“people live and die by nonsense. It's not what is so much as what people think is.”

“Saying something is 'too bad' is easy. You say you disapprove, which makes you a nice person, and then you can go about your business and not be interested anymore. It's a lot worse than 'too bad.' It's against everything decent and natural.”

“The Earth should not be cut up into hundreds of different sections, each inhabited by a self-defined segment of humanity that considers its own welfare and its own "national security" to be paramount above all other consideration.I am all for cultural diversity and would be willing to see each recognizable group value its cultural heritage. I am a New York patriot, for instance, and if I lived in Los Angeles, I would love to get together with other New York expatriates and sing "Give My Regards to Broadway."This sort of thing, however, should remain cultural and benign. I'm against it if it means that each group despises others and lusts to wipe them out. I'm against arming each little self-defined group with weapons with which to enforce its own prides and prejudices.The Earth faces environmental problems right now that threaten the imminent destruction of civilization and the end of the planet as a livable world. Humanity cannot afford to waste its financial and emotional resources on endless, meaningless quarrels between each group and all others. there must be a sense of globalism in which the world unites to solve the real problems that face all groups alike.Can that be done? The question is equivalent to: Can humanity survive?I am not a Zionist, then, because I don't believe in nations, and because Zionism merely sets up one more nation to trouble the world. It sets up one more nation to have "rights" and "demands" and "national security" and to feel it must guard itself against its neighbors.There are no nations! There is only humanity. And if we don't come to understand that right soon, there will be no nations, because there will be no humanity. ”

“To a thoughtful biographer, [Ebling Mis's house] was "the symbolization of a retreat from a non-academic reality", a society columnist gushed silkily at its "frightfully masculine atmosphere of careless disorder", a University Ph.D called it brusquely, "bookish, but unorganized", a non-university friend said, "good for a drink anytime and you can put your feet on the sofa", and a breezy newsweekly broadcast, that went in for color, spoke of the "rooky, down-to-earth, no-nonsense living quarters of blaspheming, Leftish, balding Ebling Mis". To Bayta, who thought of no audience but herself at the moment, and who had the advantage of first-hand information, it was merely sloppy.”