“Any fool can tell a crisis when it arrives. The real service to the state is to detect it in embryo.”
Source: Foundation
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Isaac Asimov 303
American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston Uni… 1920–1992Related quotes
“The state of crisis is the real war; the equilibrium is nothing but its reflex.”
On War (1832), Book 3
“Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.”
Falsehood, iii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIX - Truth and Convenience
“It's a real blessing for me to tell you, sir, that cavalry has arrived — Fox is here!”
2009-02-03
2000s, 2009
Source: Days of Magic, Nights of War
"Pouf Positive"
Untold Decades: Seven Comedies of Gay Romance (1988)
Preface (1982 edition), p. ix
Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
Context: There is enormous inertia—a tyranny of the status quo—in private and especially governmental arrangements. Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.
“You can always tell a detective on TV. He never takes his hat off.”
Source: Playback (1958), chapter 14
“Any kind of manipulation with human embryos should be prohibited.”
As quoted in "Dr. Frankenstein, I Presume?" by Andrew Ross in Salon (February 1997).