Our list of the best quotes from Apple TV+ series Foundation created by David S. Goyer, based on the book series of the same name by Isaac Asimov.
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Top Foundation Quotes
Gaal Dornick: When I was a child, I told my mother I wanted to learn every planet in the Galactic Empire, beginning in the center, and moving out to Star’s End. Each night, she told me stories. I traveled light-years my mind expanding to hold more and more worlds. But I never reached Terminus. Straddling the farthest reaches of civilization, unsettled by man, it was the end. And its story remained dark to me until many years later. Until it became my story. Until it became the only story.
Gaal Dornick: Salvor Hardin. Hober Mallow. The Mule. I would learn these names one day. The heroes and villains fighting for the salvation of mankind. But to understand our future, we have to remember the past, and the ones who caused it all. A mathematician. A martyr. A murderer. And the most important player of all, Hari Seldon.
Brother Day: Words have a way of fanning into wildfires.
Gaal Dornick: Whatever remained of the natural world belonged to the Emperors. Dawn. Day. Dusk. The Genetic Dynasty. Clones of Cleon the First, decanted at different ages.
Young Brother Dawn: When people are afraid to do their job right, they’re certain to do it wrong. That’s poor stewardship.
Brother Day: Not everything is a teachable moment.
Gaal Dornick: Math doesn’t take sides. It doesn’t judge.
Raych Foss: People lie, Gaal. Numbers don’t.
Gaal Dornick: They think I’m the only one who can prove you wrong.
Hari Seldon: And you are, if I was. But I’m not.
Hari Seldon: Math is never just numbers. In the wrong hands, it’s a weapon. In the right hands, deliverance.
Gaal Dornick: When a planet wants you dead, you die.
Brother Day: Art is simply politics sweeter tongue.
Advocate Xylas: Your truths are so esoteric they escape the grasp of nearly every citizen.
Hari Seldon: They’re not my truths. They belong to science.
Hari Seldon: A rotten tree trunk appears strong, until the storm breaks it in two.
Hari Seldon: The Empire will fall. Order will vanish. Interstellar wars will be endless. Ten thousand worlds reduced to radioactive cinders. Nothing we do can prevent this.
Jerril: [referring to Seldon] He devises a theory so opaque that no one in the galaxy can understand it, and when he finds an individual who can, he doesn’t allow her a look behind the curtain. Why? Because history is littered with charlatans and false messiahs.
Gaal Dornick: [referring to Seldon] Kill him, you kill hope. Kill hope, they kill you.
Hari Seldon: [to Brother Day] Well, I see the value in difference, in the new. You offer nothing new. Just a younger grape, from the same vine, destined for the same old bottle.
Hari Seldon: Change is frightening. Especially to those in power.
Gaal Dornick: It takes more power to build than to burn.