It's just that old people always think young people haven't really learned about love; and young people think that old people have forgotten about lo… - Isaac Asimov

no human mind has created those equations directly. We have merely spent decades programming more powerful computers and they have devised and stored the equations, but, of course, we don't know if they are valid and have meaning. It depends entirely on how valid and meaningful the programming is in the first place.

Dors Venabili had not eaten either and she seemed the most tense and unhappy of the three.

How the mighty had fallen! Kingdoms! They were prefects in the old days, all part of the same province, which in turn had been part of a sector, which in turn had been part of a quadrant, which in turn had been part of the all-embracing Galactic Empire. And now that the Empire had lost control over the farther reaches of the Galaxy, these little splinter groups of planets became kingdoms — with comic-opera kings and nobles, and petty, meaningless wars, and a life that went on pathetically among the ruins. A civilization falling. Nuclear power forgotten. Science fading to mythology — until the Foundation had stepped in. The Foundation that Hari Seldon had established for just that purpose here on Terminus.