Now how I play a part, as an individual, in the foreseen course of history, I don't know. Perhaps I have no definite part, since the Plan leaves indi… - Isaac Asimov

We speak of time and mind, which do not easily yield to categories. We separate past and future and find that time is an amalgam of both. We separate good and evil and find that mind is an amalgam of both. To understand, we must grasp the whole.

it is well known that the friend of a conqueror is but the last victim,

The entire world was one functional distortion. There was no living object on its surface but man, his pets, and his parasites. No blade of grass or fragment of uncovered soil could be found outside the hundred square miles of the Imperial Palace. No water outside the Palace grounds existed but in the vast underground cisterns that held the water supply of a world. The lustrous, indestructible, incorruptible metal that was the unbroken surface of the planet was the foundation of the huge metal structures that mazed the planet. They were structures connected by causeways; laced by corridors; cubbyholed by offices; basemented by the huge retail centres that covered square miles; penthoused by the glittering amusement world that sparkled into life each night.