Throughout you have invariably relied on authority or on the past — never on yourselves. - Isaac Asimov

And after that, there was only the ship, large and glistening; the cool production of 12,000 years of Imperial progress; and himself, with his doctorate in mathematics freshly obtained and an invitation from the great Hari Seldon to come to Trantor and join the vast and somewhat mysterious Seldon Project.

I have always found in my own work — quite different from yours, of course, but possibly we may generalize — that zeroing in tightly on a particular problem is self-defeating. Why not relax and talk about something else, and your unconscious mind — not laboring under the weight of concentrated thought — may solve the problem for you.

I have made a discovery,' said Giskard, his voice carrying no shade of emotion. 'I have made it because, for the first time in my existence, I faced thousands of human beings. Had I done this two centuries ago, I would have made the discovery then. Had I never faced so many at once, then I would never have made the discovery at all.

'Consider, then, how many vital points I might easily grasp, but never have and never will, simply because the proper conditions for it will never come my way. I remain ignorant except where circumstance helps me, and I cannot count on circumstance.