Pebble in the Sky Quotes

“Any planet is 'Earth' to those that live on it.”
― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

“They won't listen. Do you know why? Because they have certain fixed notions about the past. Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don't want the truth; they want their traditions.”
― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

“There never can be a man so lost as one who is lost in the vast and intricate corridors of his own lonely mind, where none may reach and none may save.”
― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

“Old men tend to forget what thought was like in their youth; they forget the quickness of the mental jump, the daring of the youthful intuition, the agility of the fresh insight. They become accustomed to the more plodding varieties of reason, and because this is more than made up by the accumulation of experience, old men think themselves wiser than the young.”
― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

“Of course there are worlds. Millions of them! Every star you see has worlds, and most of those you don't see.”
― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

“It was obvious that bigotry was never a one-way operation, that hatred bred hatred!”
― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

“You see, proteins, as I probably needn't tell you, are immensely complicated groupings of amino acids and certain other specialized compounds, arranged in intricate three-dimensional patterns that are as unstable as sunbeams on a cloudy day. It is this instability that is life, since it is forever changing its position in an effort to maintain its identity--in the manner of a long rod balanced on an acrobat's nose.”
― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

“One might accept death reasoningly, with every aspect of the conscious mind, but the body was a brute beast that knew nothing of reason.”
― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

“Do not forget that a traitor within our ranks, known to us, can do more harm to the enemy than a loyal man can do good to us.”
― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

“Give us but the chance and a new generation of Earthmen would grow to maturity, lacking insularity and believing wholeheartedly in the oneness of Man.”
― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

“All right, Schwartz, tackle my mind now. Go as deep as you want. I was born on Baronn in the Sirius Sector. I lived my life in an atmosphere of anti-Terrestrialism in the formative years, so I can't help what flaws and follies lie at the roots of my subconscious. But look on the surface and tell me if, in my adult years, I have not fought bigotry in myself. Not in others; that would be easy. But in myself, and as hard as I could.”
― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

“Earthmen may even rule at Trantor for a generation, but their children will become Trantorians, and in their turn will look down upon the remnant on Earth.”
― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

“The elderly man, flushed with pleasure, was recounting in voluble fashion his experiences and impressions. His wife joined in periodically, with meticulous corrections involving completely unimportant points; these being given and taken in the best of humor.”
― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

“Yet he had expended much of an inquisitive nature upon random reading. By the sheer force of indiscriminate voracity, he had gleaned a smattering of practically everything, and by means of a trick memory had managed to keep it all straight.”
― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

“And as long as it is so believed, Procurator, and as long as we of Earth are treated as pariahs, you are going to find in us the characteristics to which you object.”
― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

“He felt that dull, heart-choking pain that feeds on itself, the pain of a wife no longer by his side at waking, of a familiar world lost…”
― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

“Câți pământeni nu reacționează printr-o ură oarbă față de toți cetățenii galactici, fără deosebire? E o boală aproape universală - ură pentru ură. Doresc concetățenii dumneavostră cu adevărat egalitate, toleranță reciprocă? Nu! Cei mai mulți nu vor decât să se-ntoarcă roata, aducându-i pe ei deasupra.”
― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

“- Ar refuza să ne asculte. Și știi de ce? Pentru că au anumite idei fixe cu privire la trecut. Orice schimbare e o blasfemie în ochii lor, chiar dacă e adevărul-adevărat. Nu vor adevărul; își vor doar tradițiile lor.”
― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

“În tinerețe părăsise Europa, plecând din Amsterdam; se schimbase ceva prin asta, nu rămăsese același om? Și dacă mai târziu oamenii părăsiseră un Pământ bolnav, îndreptându-se spre alte lumi de pe firmament, nu rămăseseră tot oameni? Nu era a sa toată Galaxia? Nu erau cu toții urmașii lui și-ai fraților săi?”
― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

“- Dar eu ce gândesc?
- Că și dacă pot citi ce e-n mintea omului nu-nseamnă că trebuie să spun cu voce tare ceea ce văd.”
― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

“Politeness on Earth is like dryness in the ocean”
― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

“An Earthman will give you anything as long as it costs nothing and is worth less”
― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

“Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made…”
― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

“Grew told him of variations of chess. There was four-handed chess, in which each player had a board, touching each other at the corners, with a fifth board filling the hollow in the center as a common No Man’s Land. There were three-dimensional chess games in which eight transparent boards were placed one over the other and in which each piece moved in three dimensions as they formerly moved in two, and in which the number of pieces and pawns were doubled, the win coming only when a simultaneous check of both enemy kings occurred. There were even the popular varieties, in which the original position of the chessmen were decided by throws of the dice, or where certain squares conferred advantages or disadvantages to the pieces upon them, or where new pieces with strange properties were introduced.”
― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky