Foundation Quotes Apple TV+ Series (Seasons 1 – 2)

Hari Seldon: Yanna, the galaxy, it’s breaking. Something’s breaking the future. Maybe I need to fix it. I need your help. Oh, my soul, I wish you weren’t just a dream. I’d find some moonlight to irritate you.

Hari Seldon: You’re not Yanna. I know my life-mate. Who are you really?

Gaal Dornick: I have dreams sometimes. About things that will happen.
Salvor Hardin: You dreamt the future? That’s funny because I have dreams about the past. Your past. I guess we have that in common. Both sleep like s**t.
Gaal Dornick: It’s not really the same thing.
Salvor Hardin: [referring to the Prime Radiant] Right. Nothing in common then. Except for that, I guess.

Gaal Dornick: How long would it be before Empire thrashed like a drowning man? Not long at all, as it turned out.

Director Sermak: Seldon said he would return, but I never imagined I’d live to see him.
Warden Jaegger Fount: And you still may not.

Warden Jaegger Fount: I think the prophet’s giving us time to get ready.
Brigadier Manlio: For what?
Director Sermak: War. With Empire.

Gaal Dornick: Hari Seldon was always a little adrift, if you ask me. He was aware of the rising seas from an early age. Before he knew which questions were too crazy to ask. And when his thoughts led him to strange new conclusions, he didn’t reject them.

Hari Seldon: Establishing trust, that’s an interrogator’s technique, not a life-mate’s.

Salvor Hardin: So there are two Haris now?
Gaal Dornick: Well, apparently so.

Salvor Hardin: [to Gaal] You know what I think? I don’t think it’s Hari you’re scared of. I think it’s the Plan itself. Maybe that’s what your nightmare was about.

Salvor Hardin: The Plan’s veering off course?
Gaal Dornick: Yes. This one. Call it the third crisis. It’s a turning point. If it isn’t handled, then there’s crisis four, five, a thousand. If we don’t start preparing for it now, the age of darkness Hari predicted gets longer, not shorter.
Salvor Hardin: How long?
Gaal Dornick: So long that it might never end.

Brother Day: Am I done?
Lead Imperial Surgeon: Yes, Empire, but you really must r…
Brother Day: Utter the word “rest”, and you die.

Brother Day: Somebody get me a damn blasted robe so my manhood isn’t flapping around!

Brother Day: I was frightened today.
Brother Dawn: Well, we’re not impervious to it. Cleon XIII knew fear.
Brother Day: I didn’t want to die. I knew another Day could be decanted, and no one would be aware it’d happened.

Brother Day: I feel like a singular soul. Don’t you feel like a singular soul?
Brother Dawn: Having children won’t make you immortal. Just the opposite. Children are meant to replace us. That’s the whole point of them, isn’t it? And if you do have them, then the day you die, you are gone. And then it’s really the last of you. What we are now, as brothers, it’s something more than that.

Brother Day: What we’ve been doing, it isn’t indecent, is it?
Demerzel: Any gift that’s given freely out of love is never indecent.

Brother Dusk: What are you doing bedding Demerzel?
Brother Day: Cleon I was well acquainted with her in that way, why shouldn’t I get to be?
Brother Dusk: Because she changed your diaper when you were a child, for one. And two, it’s an abuse of your position.
Brother Day: Oh, rest assured, she’s enjoying my position very much.

Brother Day: We can’t keep going on like we are now. Drifting further and further from our genetic origin. Deep down, you and even Dawn must surely grasp that.
Brother Dusk: Must we? We are drifting, surely. But steering into the rapids seems an odd cure.
Brother Day: But it is the boldest one. It’s time the Empire learned how to paddle again, brother.

Gaal Dornick: There’s almost nothing left. This place now, this isn’t home.
Salvor Hardin: Maybe it’s just where we came to find each other.

Salvor Hardin: [to Gaal] You’re the last person I know, you are not allowed to die!

Salvor Hardin: You know, this isn’t how I thought it would be. I had this idea that I could find you, and I thought by some miracle if I did, there would be this connection between us. And I’d see you, and I’d feel like now I make sense.
Gaal Dornick: We’ve known each other a day. Salvor, you had time to imagine what this reunion might be like, and I didn’t. So it’s a shock. Maybe one day this will be less strange, and maybe it won’t. I don’t know yet.

Gaal Dornick: Listen, everyone I ever knew, everyone I loved, is behind me. That is rare and terrible, and we share that.

Phara: Crying for help into the void. Even your last living action is weak.

Brother Day: Seldon. So you’re saying his Foundation never withered away, they flourished?
Brother Dusk: We should never have let them go. Only Empire commands the stars. Crush them. Now.
Demerzel: Not yet, Empire.
Brother Dusk: You bring us this, and then you counsel restraint?
Demerzel: I do. The implications demand investigation. But waging a war based on unproven innuendo strikes me as an ill wind.

Brother Day: Has the rot taken a few outwardly branches, or has it spread to the trunk?
Brother Dusk: Our tree does seem to be embattled, doesn’t it? Magicians, Angels, provisional brides. Everyone hacking away at our branches. Get your house in order, brother.

Kalle: Your work was always incomplete. Perhaps I am its completion.
Hari Seldon: If you’re the Prime Radiant, what’s your goal?
Kalle: I have a vested interest in humanity’s destiny.
Hari Seldon: Oh, well, that’s worrying. I wish you’d say you had a vested interest in our survival.
Kalle: Isn’t it the same thing?
Hari Seldon: It isn’t. And you should know that.

Hari Seldon: What is the point of this charade?
Kalle: Your mind is damaged, Hari. It has been damaged for a long time. I am trying to help you knit it back together. If you want out, think.

Salvor Hardin: You have to let him out, Gaal.
Gaal Dornick: No.
Salvor Hardin: He’s a digital ghost. We let him loose, he’ll probably find the fault in seconds.
Gaal Dornick: I can’t. Hari and I didn’t part on good terms. It’s too risky.
Salvor Hardin: Look at where we are! He’s our only chance to get off Synnax. What use are we to the Plan if we’re dead?

Hari Seldon: Gaal Dornick! It’s time you and I had a reckoning.

Salvor Hardin: Hari Seldon! You don’t know me, but I know you. Your Second Foundation doesn’t stand a chance if we don’t get this ship off-planet right now! You’re in the mainframe. Clear our avionics fault. Help us.

Brother Constant: Well, that was a productive purge, wasn’t it? Clean as a whistle, all the way through.
Poly Verisof: You’re a demon.
Brother Constant: And you’re detoxed. Give it a minute, and you’ll be perky enough to wipe your a** and greet the day with a smile.

Poly Verisof: Faith is a funny thing, Brother.

Brother Day: So neither of my brothers hired someone to kill me? What a low bar we’ve set these days.
Demerzel: Or more precisely, they don’t remember hiring someone to kill you.
Brother Day: Well, that’s a loophole to close.

Brother Day: It’s a step into chaos, another symptom of void-f***ed entropy as everything goes lurching off into disorder, and I’m left to scrabble around like an infant, looking for pieces large enough to grasp. From the universe to an atom, it all just falls apart in your own damn hands.

Brother Day: How long did you expect my outburst to last?
Demerzel: A minute and a quarter. You came in well under.

Salvor Hardin: So, the Second Foundation. Why did you keep Hari from starting it?
Gaal Dornick: I don’t know. I loved your father. With Raych, I finally felt whole. And Hari ripped that away from me. I knew the Plan was important, but in the moment, I couldn’t separate the man from the math.
Salvor Hardin: And if you had, you could’ve helped Terminus?
Gaal Dornick: It’s more complicated than that.

Gaal Dornick: Hari doesn’t tell you everything. He never does.
Hari Seldon: Give a girl a fish, she eats for a day. Teach a girl to fish… You’ve peered into the Prime Radiant, Gaal. All the way to the end. The answers are there for you if you care to work them out. We’re not meant to interfere in the war between Empire and Foundation, much as you might wish to.

Hari Seldon: First Foundation needs to be kept in the dark. The psychohistory predicts the natural patterns of humanity. Introduce too much information into the system, and you disturb it, which is why the system required a counterpoint.
Gaal Dornick: A Second Foundation. Psychohistorians with access to the Plan. Knowledge of the future applied judiciously and with intent to quietly adjust the Empire’s course. Or the First Foundation’s, if needed.
Hari Seldon: Now she gets it. Finally.

Salvor Hardin: You’re talking like Terminus is the enemy.
Hari Seldon: It isn’t. Not yet. But power corrupts. And a Foundation left unchecked becomes Empire all over again.
Salvor Hardin: They are good people. You do not know them like I do.
Hari Seldon: Everyone you knew there is dead.
Salvor Hardin: Nice. We lose, it’s bad. We win, it’s bad. I can’t accept that.

Hari Seldon: You felt something. Another presentiment. Tell me.
Gaal Dornick: Despair. Death. Destruction. I did this. When I climbed out of the pool and stumbled in on you and Raych, I threw the equations off course. But maybe those same instincts can steer them back.

Hari Seldon: You feel the future as well?
Salvor Hardin: Not the future. The past.

Hari Seldon: Your turning point. How far into the future would you say that is?
Gaal Dornick: Another hundred and fifty years?
Hari Seldon: That’s where you need to project your consciousness, Gaal. That’s where we find a new path.
Gaal Dornick: I should be long dead by then.
Hari Seldon: You slept through the last century. Who’s to say you don’t sleep through the next?

Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: I’ve heard you don’t lift your own forks. That the servants feed you like infants.
Brother Dusk: Oh, please, Astrid, come and hoist this quail and shove it into my mouth.

Brother Day: Our alliance will provide you with all the support you could wish for.
Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: I see benefits to myself. But what of you, Brother Dawn? You’ll lose a kingdom.
Brother Dawn: But gain a sister.
Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: Is that what I’ll be?

Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: And won’t I be accomplishing what yesterday’s attempt sought to do but could not? A baby is born, and all the other branches fall off the tree. Assassination by procreation.
Brother Dawn: We’re not branches. It’s all one tree.
Dusk, Day, Dawn: We’re the same man.
Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: But you would never become Day. Your very reason for existing would be erased.

Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: May I see them, Empire? The branches I’ll be snipping off. The bodies in jars.

Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: So, you’re expecting intercourse?
Brother Day: In the pre-Cleonic age, Empress Ravenna thought it essential. And I think it’s a good way to create an emotional bond. She also fancied a public consummation, but that seems cruel to the public.

Brother Day: Dominion is small.
Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: Empire’s shrinking.
Brother Day: Empire is healthy.
Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: Is it? Because there are rumors, Day, that the integrity of your hermetically sealed lineage was corrupted some time ago. Which would explain, I suppose, your interest in my as-yet-unexploited womb.

Poly Verisof: [referring to Seldon] Every time I preach now, I wonder if he is still invested in us.
Brother Constant: Of course he is. I feel it. And you do too. When you tell the story of your bearing witness to him, the light pours from you.
Poly Verisof: That’s flash powder, Brother.
Brother Constant: Flash powder and truth, Claric.

Gaal Dornick: He was choking me.
Hari Seldon: Who was?
Gaal Dornick: He calls himself the Mule. He’s the source of the coming darkness. He’s like us.
Hari Seldon: A telepath.
Gaal Dornick: Only more powerful.

Warden Jaegger Fount: Poly Verisof, the Holy Witness. The ten year-old half-feral child with a front-row seat to revelation.
Poly Verisof: I don’t know about the half-feral, but I’m honored all the same.

Poly Verisof: Seldon was a teacher, not a trader. His mission was to shorten humankind’s slide into barbarism and ignorance. Do you still believe in that?
Director Sermak: I believe in the Prophet.
Poly Verisof: Yeah? Which way are you spelling it?

Poly Verisof: This is a mistake. I can feel it in my bones.

Warden Jaegger Fount: [as he’s disintegrated] Get Hober Mallow!
Brother Dusk: [as his name appears on the Vault] Who the heck is Hober Mallow?
Poly Verisof: S**t.

Salvor Hardin: You saw something else, didn’t you?
Gaal Dornick: My vision of the Mule, I hid something. From you and Hari. I was trying to escape him. There was ash everywhere. The smell of human flesh burning. He knocked me down, and I was stunned. I turned. I saw you lying next to me. You were dead. Salvor, you were dead.

Hari Seldon: Stay alert while we’re gone.
Gaal Dornick: Why? The planet’s uninhabited.
Hari Seldon: Uninhabited doesn’t mean we’re alone.

Poly Verisof: The Vault is a man, and it’s literally made out of Hari Seldon. I told you he wouldn’t approve of what you’ve done here.
Director Sermak: You think this is divine judgment, Claric?
Poly Verisof: No, but it was a judgment.
Director Sermak: Whatever the case, we don’t have time to cry and clasp our icons.

Poly Verisof: Of course we’re finding Hober Mallow. And we’re walking him into that Vault.
Director Sermak: Psychohistory isn’t determinism, Poly.
Poly Verisof: It’s not a single path, but it is a landscape that sometimes narrows into a dangerous mountain pass that can’t be avoided. That’s why we call it a crisis.

Poly Verisof: I believe in psychohistory. I believe that the Empire is going to fall. And if we’re smart, we’re the ones to bring it down. Humans will wallow like beasts for a very long time, unless we use what Seldon gave us and walk through that blasted mountain pass with that f***ing a**hole, Hober Mallow.

Brother Constant: Hober Mallow? Never heard that name before. I wasn’t even sure it’s a person. Ask me, Mallow could be a region of space or a species of nut.
Poly Verisof: Arguably, he is a species of nut.

Poly Verisof: [referring to Mallow] He sold thirty-eight of Seldon’s finger bones before Foundation revoked his trades license.
Brother Constant: Why would the Prophet ask for a man like that?
Poly Verisof: Seldon always appreciated a good joke. He was human too, you know? The Prophet’s title was something that we bestowed on him after.

Poly Verisof: You’re talking about a man who views any prohibition as a personal challenge. If it’s forbidden, Hober traffics in it.

Hari Seldon: The Emperors are hollow men who hollow out their worlds.

Hari Seldon: You’re disruptive.
Gaal Dornick: Around and around we go.
Hari Seldon: We’re here at the Radiant’s behest. It’s not some detour keeping you from what you want.
Gaal Dornick: What I want is to slap you.
Hari Seldon: You tried that already.

Hari Seldon: In another life, you might have taught your daughter all about my Vault.
Gaal Dornick: You seem to think you’re very indispensable.
Hari Seldon: Well, Gaal, it is my Plan. But, no, at enough scale, I am insignificant.

Bel Riose: Tell Empire he can go f*** himself in his big, blue f***ing dress.
Demerzel: I have an order to carry out if you say no.
Bel Riose: I ain’t afraid to die.
Demerzel: That’s why we want you. And I have a way to make it worthwhile to say yes.

Demerzel: [to Bel] I know hope is painful. You don’t have to hope. Just come with me.

Gaal Dornick: Traditionally, doors have hinges and maybe a knob. This is a wall.
Hari Seldon: Open a wall, it becomes a door.

Hober Mallow: Anything can be faked, unless it happens to you.

Bel Riose: Thank you, Empire. I’m grateful to no longer be on Lepsis.
Brother Day: Yes, I can smell the gratitude.

Brother Day: I want you to find out if the Foundation is a threat to me.
Bel Riose: Can they read the future?
Brother Day: That would fall under the heading of, “Things you’re supposed to find out.”

Bel Riose: You’re an arrogant bully. If you brought me here just to kill me, then you’re an idiot as well.
Brother Day: When you defied my orders in battle, you embarrassed me. A man can withstand that, but not an empire. An empire breathes respect. It requires it for its life.

Bel Riose: And this isn’t about respect for bloody Empire. I made you look foolish, didn’t I? You. The singular man in that suit of skin that’s never come within a light-year of a battle.
Brother Day: Do you think to strike me?
Bel Riose: Strike you? I’d like to rip your f***ing head off.

Brother Day: I let go of good policy or genetic sense memory of good policy.

Salvor Hardin: Look, whatever version of Hari this is, he scares me. And the two of you together. Gaal, he almost suffocated you. And you encouraged it. So if you say, “Fly us out of here,” I will take us right up.
Gaal Dornick: But?
Salvor Hardin: But I don’t think you want that.

Salvor Hardin: [referring to Seldon] You and him, you got your own language. I don’t speak it. Look, all I’m saying is, you’re more like him than you want to admit.
Gaal Dornick: Maybe you’re right. He was my idol. Father figure I convinced myself I needed.
Salvor Hardin: Yeah, that’s the thing with parents, isn’t it? Never quite who you build them up to be.

Salvor Hardin: My dad used to say, “Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what’s right.” So just ask yourself, Gaal, if the situation were reversed, what would Hari do now?
Gaal Dornick: He’d f***ing leave.

Hober Mallow: [as he’s about to be executed] I was born of modest means, and I faced many obstacles in my life. I suppose it’s not the past I should dwell on, but the future I’ll be denied. The acts of charity I’ll never carry out. The strangers, I’ll never meet. Enemies I might have charmed into friends. But it’s not to be. I played my game too boldly, and I see that now. And here I am, I have no move that will not put me in check.

Glawen Curr: But I tell you, being under Empire’s heel leaves a mark. And that doesn’t go away when the heel is lifted.
Bel Riose: So, you’re going to be at my side every minute, are you? Looking for the tread marks on my face.
Glawen Curr: They’re not on your face.

Gaal Dornick: How do you have a body? How is this possible?
Hari Seldon: I don’t know.

Enjoiner Rue: The Royal Seal is on everything. This morning, I thought I saw it on my own face. And you know what? It was, because it’s embroidered on the damn pillow.

Enjoiner Rue: Empire makes everyone into a courtesan. Eventually.

Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: It’s easy to forget how things are with you. It seems so strange from the outside.
Brother Dawn: Sometimes it’s strange from the inside too.

Brother Dawn: Age brings changes.

Brother Dawn: You’re going to be an interesting addition to our strange little family.
Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: You know, since you are the same man, have you ever wondered why they don’t have us marrying? I think we’d have suited.

Brother Dusk: Well, I started early. Painted this section when I was still Day. “Why wait for it to be a chore,” I thought, “when it can be a pleasure instead?”

Enjoiner Rue: Things are changing. You might be the last Dusk and the first Grandfather Cleon.
Brother Dusk: If the union happens.
Enjoiner Rue: Right. Yes. No one seems to be especially in favor of this match, apart from Day and myself. Of course, we have the votes that matter most.
Brother Dusk: Not the Queen’s?
Enjoiner Rue: My opinion weighs heavy with her, but you’re right. She’s her own woman. She doesn’t suffer idiots.

Brother Dusk: Empire tends to get wisdom late. For example, I’m much smarter now than when last we talked.
Enjoiner Rue: I wouldn’t remember.
Brother Dusk: And that is a shame. We had a lively conversation and a joyous copulation.
Enjoiner Rue: Well, that’s good to know.

Hober Mallow: [referring to the pile of ashes] That was a person? Oh, hell, no.
Brother Constant: We should’ve told him.
Hober Mallow: What? About the incineration part? Yeah, you should have!
Poly Verisof: You would’ve refused to come.
Hober Mallow: I did. I did refuse.
Brother Constant: Where is that heart full of hope, Hober? The Vault won’t hurt you, it asked for you.
Hober Mallow: What if it asked for me because it wants to kill me? Huh?

Hober Mallow: [referring to the Vault] I’ve been wandering this place forever. This place never ends!

Poly Verisof: Have some respect, you a**. We’re inside the mathematics of Hari Seldon.
Hober Mallow: Yeah. Well, I wouldn’t go that way. I took a dump over there.
Brother Constant: Right. Well, let’s go this way.

Brother Constant: [inside the Vault] Wow. I would not want to get lost in here.
Hober Mallow: You are lost in here.

Hober Mallow: How is there food here?
Hari Seldon: How is there a library? The Vault manipulates molecules. Everything is molecules. Food is molecules.
Brother Constant: If the Vault makes it, then it all comes from your body.

Poly Verisof: I could almost believe you transported us to Trantor. We’re inside a tesseract, right? A polychoron.
Hari Seldon: A four-dimensional object in three-dimensional space. Yes, Poly.

Hari Seldon: You must be Hober Mallow. I heard you, you know, during your wanderings. Entreaties to dead grandparents, parents, and a bewildering number of bedmates.
Hober Mallow: Yeah, and you didn’t think to throw some food molecules in my path? You taste delicious, by the way.
Hari Seldon: Apologies. I’ve grown detached from physical needs. And time, well, it slips in here.

Hari Seldon: I’m going to need you all.
Hober Mallow: To do what?
Hari Seldon: Prevent a war.

Ducem Barr: Call me Ducem, please. “Patrician” sounds like a rich man sliding apology money across a mattress.

Glawen Curr: I’ve never actually seen a book.
Ducem Barr: Most haven’t. Books are for old men. Past glories are poor feeding, and half the stories told about the old days are mythical anyway.

Bel Riose: Here’s to those who fight.
Glawen Curr: Here’s to those who fight and ask why.
Ducem Barr: He’s right. That’s the toast. An important addition from someone who clearly asks why.

Ducem Barr: And now, I need you to shoot me, please.
Bel Riose: What?
Ducem Barr: I’ve lived a long life. I have no desire to suffer torture at the hands of my old friends out there. If it’s any consolation, I already poisoned myself with the lichen I smoked. But a particle beam to the head will surely be more dignified. Please? Oh, thank you.
[Bel shoots him in the head]

Hari Seldon: I take it you know how to sell Foundation.
Poly Verisof: Seven planets so far.
Hari Seldon: This is graduation day. Give them the sermon of your lifetime. Make them fall in love with us and delay this war as long as you can.
Poly Verisof: An agent of peace. Yes. That’s something worth being.

Poly Verisof: The warden you incinerated. Why did you kill him?
Hari Seldon: Well, I had to. For a god to be effective you have to be intermittently wrathful. Besides, I heard the warden on my doorstep. How long before he declared himself the only holy vessel worthy of my spirit. Hmm?
Poly Verisof: So it was divine judgment.
Hari Seldon: Let no being presume upon my mercy.

Hober Mallow: Oh, come on. The Church of Seldon. Isn’t that part of the same big confidence game? You’ve got priests claiming they can perform miracles. Now, I’m still not sure what that’s feeding.
Hari Seldon: It’s feeding growth, Hober. The developmental stage that all successful civilizations go through. Although, some never escape it. The church will fall away with time and be replaced by another mechanism.

Hober Mallow: So, you’re not sending me with the drunk and the monk to sell peace to Empire?
Hari Seldon: No. Your mission is separate, and one might say, counterposed. The person who extends an open hand in friendship had better have a blade in a fist behind his back.
Hober Mallow: Yeah, I can be a blade. Alright. Where am I being thrust?

Brother Constant: It’s just our parting is unexpected. I had other hopes. We were getting to know each other. You were going to grow fond of me, and eventually, add me to your list of bedpartners that the Prophet mentioned.
Hober Mallow: I was? I’m not generally a robe chaser.
Brother Constant: And then you’d be first on my list of bedpartners.
Hober Mallow: Brother, I’m honored, but you’re a woman of virtue.
Brother Constant: Oh. Honestly, I’m not. Not in that way. I’m just a woman of small opportunities and particular likes. It will happen when it happens.

Hober Mallow: Well, for the record, I’d prefer to be, say, tenth on the list. I just don’t like to be first in general. I mean, you saw that. Dragged me kicking and screaming into that Vault.
Brother Constant: I’d like to think that our consummation would’ve been a pretty different experience.

Brother Constant: I can’t help feeling that this is it. And it’s a shame. I’m not attracted to many people.
Hober Mallow: Of course not. Why would you be? I mean, people are terrible.
Brother Constant: Maybe you expect too much. See how you’re an optimist even though you don’t think so?

Hari Seldon: My body is as it was the moment before I died. I walked into the cave with Kalle. I stood in the darkness, weightless and waiting. And then I awoke beside you feeling the tug of gravity on my spine.
Salvor Hardin: She cloned you.

Gaal Dornick: So, after a century and a half, the Genetic Dynasty has a rival.
Hari Seldon: The irony isn’t lost on me.
Salvor Hardin: Someone wanted you flesh and blood again. And after all that trouble you went to, turning yourself into an idea.

Salvor Hardin: They’re selling psychohistory as magic.
Gaal Dornick: They’re selling you. The Prophet.
Hari Seldon: Not me. Him. The other Seldon. And it was bound to happen. People do love to kneel.

Hari Seldon: It’s been a while since I felt physical pain. It’s exhilarating.
Salvor Hardin: Maybe in small doses.

Hari Seldon: [to Gaal] You’re letting what you saw in your vision affect you. Don’t.

Brother Day: [referring to Sareth] She wants to copulate.
Demerzel: As you hoped. You want a real alliance, not a paper one.
Brother Day: Yes. It’s all coming together. But I’ve grown accustomed to you in this regard.
Demerzel: You’re a man. An impressive man by any measure. She’ll not have seen the like.
Brother Day: Exactly.

Brother Day: The citizens need to be reminded that they’re only alive because I will it so.

Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: Your aura. Do you wear it even when you’re intimate?
Brother Day: Always.
Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: Dialed up so high? What if you want to, I don’t know, get spanked? I imagine there are paddles around here that would leave the royal crest imprinted on one’s bottom.
Brother Day: I’ll order some made.

Brother Day: There’s an old saying that a king’s head never rests lightly on his pillow.
Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: Is that right?
Brother Day: I just think those other kings need better pillows.

Brother Day: I think you’ll find, when a man and a woman are together, if you want things to line up properly, the man needs to be on top.

Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: [to Day] Have you ever even tried to think about things from my point of view? Do you even know what another point of view is? How could you? The people closest to you are you.

Brother Day: She suspects I killed her family. I had to accuse her of trying to kill me. It got heated. We’re engaged.
Demerzel: Best wishes.

Brother Dusk: An end to regrets. Would you do that?
Enjoiner Rue: Never. I embrace regrets. I want to remember the view from the top of the mountain. Even if that means I also have to remember the fall. You’re lucky to be able to trust your memories.

Hugo: [to Salvor] You’re you. And you get a gift horse, and you check its mouth.

Hari Seldon: The whole premise of psychohistory is that the future isn’t set in stone.
Gaal Dornick: But all my visions have come true.
Hari Seldon: On Synnax, you dreamt of a great wave crashing down on you. It didn’t. You’re here.

Hari Seldon: If I’d known…
Gaal Dornick: You what? Would you have done it differently?
Hari Seldon: I don’t know. I’d like to think I would.

Hari Seldon: [to Gaal, referring to Salvor] You have this moment with her right now. Not everybody gets that.

Brother Dusk: Cleon, we stand before you. Sons, brothers, selves, to seek an audience with the august memory of the source of all that we are. Our hands tell our stories, and it is your story. Pray, hear our question.

Cleon I: You are one man. If you become divided, you dishonor me and what I devised. To be united is your natural state. To envy Day is to envy yourselves.

Cleon I: The dream lives on in you. Because you kept it alive in you.

Brother Dusk: We are multiple, but we are mortal. And I should’ve seen this coming. I should’ve seen all of this coming. And Day? Day was always going to write himself into history, one way or the other.

Brother Dusk: Demerzel pacified the galaxy for me. But Day, even as a young boy, was ashamed of me for it. He asked, what will history call me? Certainly not peace bringer, or conqueror, or even betrayer.
Brother Dawn: You’re not dead yet. Your legacy isn’t set.
Brother Dusk: When a man is old, he doesn’t care what he remembers. He cares how he’s remembered. And at the end, we’re all just memoriums.

Brother Dusk: Perhaps Day did you a favor giving away your chair. Well, now you can have what I always wanted.
Brother Dawn: What did you want?
Brother Dusk: What every young man wants. A life. Love.

Tellem Bond: The mentally incomplete compensate with their other senses.

Tellem Bond: Do not worship children. It is not good for them.

Gaal Dornick: You’re reading us.
Tellem Bond: Your minds are clear as water. The things you’ve lost. The people.

Tellem Bond: I’m sorry we had to use the image of your man, Salvor. You know, you’re a much more sentimental person than you let on.
Salvor Hardin: Yeah, he kissed me. F*** you for that.
Loron: I didn’t think that was going to happen. I’m sorry.

Tellem Bond: Hari Seldon is famous, and famously dead, and very hard to read. I needed you to think about your death and resurrection so I could try to understand what happened.
Salvor Hardin: So do you? What happened?
Tellem Bond: No idea. Hari’s very murky inside.

Tellem Bond: There’s not going to be a Second Foundation.

Tellem Bond: I can’t accept an inescapable future, and neither should you. Our actions have to mean something.
Gaal Dornick: I really want to believe that, but if you don’t think what I showed you was the future, then what was it?
Tellem Bond: Your Hari may say a likely future, but I don’t know, and neither do you because it’s been filtered through perceptions shaped by him. Until you’re ready to explore what you can do, you’ll never know what that vision really was.

Brother Constant: It’s hard to imagine a place like this ever falling.
Poly Verisof: Circulation ceases first at the outer edges. It will take a while yet for the decay to reach the heart.

Salvor Hardin: You’re awfully relaxed for a man on a planet full of possibly hostile psychics.
Hari Seldon: Gaal will handle Tellem. I was just hurting our chances.

Hari Seldon: My toes are in fine, cool water for the first time in almost two centuries.
Salvor Hardin: Right. The brand-new toes you don’t quite remember getting.

Salvor Hardin: Well, you were immortal, more or less. Putting you in a body just made you more vulnerable. So why did she do it? Whoever she was.
Hari Seldon: I suspect you’re about to tell me.
Salvor Hardin: Well, I’m not sure. No direct benefit that I can see.
Hari Seldon: I assumed it was in service of my gospel. A messianic story requires death and resurrection.
Salvor Hardin: You had a resurrection. That’s what the Vault is.

Salvor Hardin: [to Seldon] Maybe someone was worried you’d reduce everyone to numbers if you weren’t careful. Maybe someone wanted you to have some skin in the game.

Hari Seldon: Sometimes being angry is easier than facing the truth.
Salvor Hardin: The truth being that Raych knew everything, didn’t he? He knew they were doomed. He kept it to himself. He still chose to be with her.
Hari Seldon: The heart wants what the heart wants. We’ve all been guilty of magical thinking at one time or other.

Hari Seldon: [to Salvor] You’re worried Gaal will turn into me, lose herself in the Plan. She won’t. Not as long as she has you by her side. She cares too much what you think of her.

Tellem Bond: You are singular, Gaal Dornick. I haven’t seen the like.
Gaal Dornick: Usually, when someone says that to me, they want something.
Tellem Bond: And I am no different. But I’m going to offer you something in return.

Tellem Bond: [to Gaal] Old homes open old wounds. And you seem to have wounds aplenty.

Gaal Dornick: You always make it seem like I follow Hari. I don’t.
Tellem Bond: Come now. Your mind’s all smudged with his fingerprints. He’ll never see you as his equal even though you’re his better. And you’re mine too.

Tellem Bond: My people would follow you.
Gaal Dornick: You can’t ask me to do that.
Tellem Bond: Of course I can. That’s why you came here. You can even call them the Second Foundation if you don’t come up with something catchier.

Hari Seldon: You really don’t like sitting still, do you?
Salvor Hardin: No.
Hari Seldon: What do you do to relax?
Salvor Hardin: Patrol.

Hari Seldon: This must be difficult for you. Focusing on a third crisis while Terminus faces a second.
Salvor Hardin: They’ll win. They have to. Though I can’t help but feel that I’m helping you build an army specifically to fight the people I swore to protect.
Hari Seldon: It isn’t the intention to fight First Foundation. We just need to prod them when necessary.

Salvor Hardin: It’s important the other Seldon doesn’t know you exist.
Hari Seldon: Absolutely crucial. His information needs to be limited.
Salvor Hardin: But you’d still want a way to monitor him, just in case.
Hari Seldon: That sounds desirable.

Hari Seldon: If you can’t trust your own mind, then what have you got?

Brother Constant: What a view. Isn’t this just Empire all over?
Poly Verisof: Here I was thinking it was like us in a flying caravan, delighting the public.

Poly Verisof: I’ve been a drunk and an addict for over a century. Time for something new. I had wine from the hands of Hari Seldon, and nothing will taste sweeter than that.

Poly Verisof: Folklore. That’s the difference between belief and faith. I believed what I saw, but faith is a bigger commitment. And you’ve always had faith, Constant. And it puts my belief to shame.

Brother Day: For anyone who needs it spelled out, I am ending the Genetic Dynasty.
Brother Dusk: At least we ate well while the feast was on.

Hari Seldon: They’re after the Radiant, Salvor. It’s on the Beggar’s. Gaal hid it. I don’t know where. It won’t look like itself. Find it, protect it. Protect Gaal. She needs you.

Gaal Dornick: I’m glad you had Mari and Abbas. I wish I could thank them.
Salvor Hardin: It’s okay. I’m not there now. I’m here. And that’s all that matters.

Tellem Bond: We’ll find your Prime Radiant.
Hari Seldon: And then you’ll destroy it.
Tellem Bond: Oh, absolutely, and with joy.

Hari Seldon: Earlier today, I walked away from them at the height of a quarrel. Did you nudge me to do that?
Tellem Bond: Good question. Doesn’t seem like you, does it? To walk away from a debate.

Hari Seldon: What now? I plead for my life? You hate anyone who can’t do what you do, don’t you?
Tellem Bond: You study patterns. You know what your kind does. Violence against any deviation from the majority, exploitation, cruelty, secrets, murder.
Hari Seldon: Murder? You condemn murder. You hypocrite.
Tellem Bond: This isn’t murder. I would never kill one of my own.

Hari Seldon: Gaal will know you’ve done this. And Salvor.
Tellem Bond: I control what Gaal and Salvor know. They’ll be told about our philosophy of death. How we only kill when we need to. For nourishment or self-defense.
Hari Seldon: But you’re going to drown me first, right?
Tellem Bond: Well, yes.

Hari Seldon: [as he’s about to be drowned] This doesn’t stop the Plan. I still have faith.
Tellem Bond: I have faith in Gaal.

Hari Seldon: [flashback] So, you think it’s treason to say, “All empires fall”?
Dr. Tadj: You’re talking about the power of large groups to effect change. You are talking about…
Hari Seldon: Evolution.

Yanna Seldon: [flashback] The darkness feels so heavy, but the gravity is light. So contradictory.

Yanna Seldon: [flashback] The silver moonlight turns even the most cynical inhabitants into romantics.
Hari Seldon: So the legend goes.
Yanna Seldon: Well, tomorrow, if you feel the same way in the sunlight, maybe we can plan an actual date.
Hari Seldon: Maybe.
Yanna Seldon: You know, theoretically. If you concur.
Hari Seldon: I live to concur.

Dr. Tadj: [flashback, referring to killing Yanna] I couldn’t have foreseen what happened!
Hari Seldon: Really? You’re going with that, are you? You’re not responsible because you couldn’t have foreseen what was going to happen. You know, it’s funny because that question comes up a lot in my life.

Dr. Tadj: [flashback] Hari, this isn’t you. Revenge. This isn’t in your nature.
Hari Seldon: No, it was in Yanna’s. This is for her.

Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: When the time comes, I want to know. Will you serve me?
Demerzel: I will serve Empire.

Dr. Oran: Once this is finished, you’ll be sedated so we can harvest the eggs.
Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: You’re not harvesting anything until Empire and I are legally bound. Call me old-fashioned.
Demerzel: You’re in no position to argue.
Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: Is that a joke, Demerzel? I can argue in any position.
Demerzel: The moment you accepted Empire’s proposal, your womb became imperial property.
Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: And you would know all about being imperial property, wouldn’t you?

Demerzel: [to Sareth] You believe Empire killed your family. I know you have come here with that in mind. So, just to say it, if ever you should entertain some fantasy of revenge, please think of them. Your parents. Your siblings. Burnt alive by the very air around them. Killed with the sort of precision I bring to my work.

Salvor Hardin: So now you’re willing to bank our whole future on Tellem.
Gaal Dornick: You need to bury those thoughts.
Salvor Hardin: Why? What are you thinking that you don’t want them to know? You know, I’ve been hearing a lot about openness since we got here. Back on Terminus, I could read people up and down. But here? Nothing. I can’t read Tellem. I can’t read anyone. Something is wrong with this place.

Loron: Tellem’s excited you’re here.
Salvor Hardin: Tellem is excited Gaal’s here.
Loron: Your talents are just as important. I felt them when we…
Salvor Hardin: Kissed?
Loron: Touched. That’s all it takes. And the kiss was your doing.
Salvor Hardin: It didn’t seem to bother you.
Loron: What kind of illusion would it have been if I pulled away?

Loron: Lose your appetite?
Salvor Hardin: I’m just trying to wrap my head around the fact that everything I eat, from now on, is going to be yelling at me the whole way down.
Tellem Bond: Small price to pay for truth.

Salvor Hardin: This mean I’m finally Sighted?
Tellem Bond: Well, there’s a few more steps, but you’re no longer blind.
Salvor Hardin: So, I’m squinting.
Tellem Bond: Like a newborn.

Gaal Dornick: I was never like my people. I was lonely, and even when I was very young, I thought in numbers. It was dangerous to think that way on my world, but I didn’t stop. Numbers warmed me in the cold. They lit my way in the dark. And then one day, they carried me out into the galaxy. And now I think all that time, my mind was counting and counting, all to understand a power I was born with.

Gaal Dornick: Hari predicted darkness. The Empire crumbling and taking everything with it. I think that’s why so many of you found each other recently. There aren’t suddenly more of us. There’s just so much more suffering now. The screams are so much louder.

Gaal Dornick: We need to nudge and mend things where we can so that whatever replaces Empire isn’t worse.

Bel Riose: Let me tell you what it looks like if Empire falls. Because I’ve seen regions of space that have fallen into lawlessness. The weak are objects. Ah, f***. The rapists are kings. The poor are slaves. Life is nothing but emptiness, pain.

Glawen Curr: Now that you thought this all through, your fears are rational.
Bel Riose: Some of them are. Does that change anything?
Glawen Curr: No. But at least now we’re scared together.

Brother Day: [to Sareth] I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but my own public charm is a result of cultivation.

Brother Day: There is a public value in a man who is willing to accept an able partner.

Brother Day: You are here by some uncanny combination of good fortune and my grace. All you need say on both accounts is, “I am grateful.”
Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: I am grateful, Empire.
Brother Day: Good.

Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: I can’t have that monster’s baby. I can’t. Your brother, he isn’t like you. It’s true. I’ve known it from the moment we met. Your eyes are different.
Brother Dawn: We have the same eyes.
Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: No. Yours are kind.
Brother Dawn: I could end up just like him.
Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: I don’t believe that.

Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: [to Dawn] I will marry Day. That much is certain. The Cleon-Child I carry, that baby could have your eyes.

Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: He’s cutting you out, Dawn. You’ll never sit on the throne. And when you’re dead and gone, it’ll be as though you never even existed. But if the one, true heir were yours, your legacy would be assured. Don’t you want that? Don’t you want to cast a shadow?

Brother Dawn: This is suicide.
Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: No. It’s a bloodless f***ing coup.

Poly Verisof: Empire. Following custom, we have a gift for you.
Brother Day: Is that right? Is it your contrition? Is it amends?
Brother Constant: It’s an atomic ashtray.
Brother Day: Oh. Absurd.

Brother Constant: War is coming, Empire. The Prophet sent us here to treat with you.
Brother Day: Your prophet gives weighty orders for a man long dead.
Poly Verisof: Oh, he’s come back. And he has brought hope with him. Hope for all of us.
Brother Day: So, you’re what then? His priests? Missionaries?
Poly Verisof: We’re salesmen.

Brother Day: So you really did come to put on a show. Selling us peace, while prodding for rebellion behind our backs.

Hari Seldon: Same faces. Same room. Does nothing ever change in Empire?

Brother Day: Why then are you also here?
Hari Seldon: To underline my claric’s words. And to warn you that the Foundation is not toothless. We have technology, ships, arms capable of laying waste. We sue for peace not because we fear we will lose, but because we know with mathematical certainty, if there is war, we shall win.

Brother Day: [to Seldon] Do you know I studied you? I had time to read in my youth. I read you. It was unsettling to learn that one man can’t change much, until I read that I, explicitly, could.

Brother Day: Your predictions are out of date, Seldon. Just like you.

Brother Constant: [referring to Seldon] I knew he was there in my mind. But I couldn’t say it because he’d stop me.
Brother Day: He was suppressing your will. What kind of a ghost is this man you follow? Who keeps an elder in the dark and uses the body of a girl. You love him. You’ll forgive him, but still, the violation.

Salvor Hardin: I grew up hearing I was special. And it messed with my head, thinking that way.
Gaal Dornick: I don’t think I’m special.
Salvor Hardin: Are you sure? Because they’re all looking at you like you’re their f***ing savior. And that is fine. As long as you don’t start believing it.
Gaal Dornick: You don’t need to trust them, but you do need to trust me. This is not the time to pull threads. Do you understand?

Tellem Bond: [as Salvor finds Seldon’s dead body] Well, this is an unfortunate thread you’ve pulled.

Tellem Bond: We did try to spare you from this, Salvor. Seeing him. I’m very sorry. I want this place to be a sanctuary. But it’s like I told you when we talked about the little creatures at lunch, sometimes you have to absorb the pain. Because sometimes a little death is necessary.
[she then makes Salvor unconscious]

Tellem Bond: [to Gaal] Hari was cargo you needed to drop. And I thought, for Salvor’s sake, you would. But I saw your heart, you cared for him, and I’m on something of an accelerated timeline. So I did the hard thing.

Tellem Bond: I feel how hard you’re working to keep me out. There’s something you really don’t want me to see.
Gaal Dornick: Because it’s mine.
Tellem Bond: Not for long, child.

Brother Day: Empire will always be benevolent, my friends. But do not mistake benevolence for weakness.

Brother Day: Is a god who presides over killers truly a god?

Brother Constant: [as she’s about to be executed] Guide me through the darkness, and together we will shorten the darkness.

Hober Mallow: Yeah. I’m sorry, folks. Beheading’s been canceled.

Hober Mallow: [referring to the beheading device] Right, there’s two switches. I don’t know which one does what.
Brother Constant: You’re just going to have to pick one. Just close your eyes, and if you hear something drop, well, just know how grateful I am to you.
Hober Mallow: What, for killing you?
Brother Constant: For saving me.

Brother Day: You used to laugh at me, Brother Dusk. You said Seldon was a ghost story. A child’s fantasy.
Brother Dusk: What? You want an apology? This was an act of war! We must answer in kind.
Brother Day: War? What war? If it comes to violence, we will destroy them utterly. No. I think I would rather talk to them.
Brother Dawn: What?

Brother Day: I do not fear change. Those whisper-ships belong to us. That planet belongs to us. I’m going!
Brother Dusk: Well, that’s child’s fantasy. Don’t be a fool!

Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: [to Day] You are right. Your realm has been leaking blood and stars for too long. It’s time for big hands to bind the wound.

Brother Day: [to Sareth] I will go. And I will look the ghost of Seldon in the eye. And I will reclaim what is ours. You will have a planet as a wedding gift.

Enjoiner Rue: The Cleons are fragmenting.
Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: And I’m wedging myself between the fragments. I know what I’m doing.
Enjoiner Rue: Do you? Vengeful plans don’t often have romance in them.

Enjoiner Rue: You have suffered terrible losses, yes. But there is so much more to lose. Once you are married, you can dispense with Day however you like. Wife and widow are both called Empress. But for now, you need to master your emotions.
Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: Rue, I am listening. And I do value you. But I am your queen, and I will make the choices.

Salvor Hardin: I wish Hari was still here.
Josiah: I’m sorry about what happened to him. He was insufficient, but I know you liked him anyway.
Salvor Hardin: He wasn’t insufficient, Josiah. He was brilliant.

Hari Seldon: [flashback] Other Seldon has what appears to be a duplicate Radiant. But in truth, there’s only one, and we both have it. In two places. To look into it, is to look into his hand.

Hari Seldon: [referring to the Radiant] It’s a single quantum system existing in a state of superposition. Why didn’t I know that already? I’m the one who built the bloody thing.
Salvor Hardin: Well, you didn’t.
Hari Seldon: No. Rhetorical question.

Hari Seldon: So there’s another me. What’s his purpose? I’m already here to galvanize the Foundation. Why go to all the trouble of creating a backup as a… Oh, that’s very clever. A second Foundation.

Hari Seldon: But if the other me has information I don’t, and if we approach all this as one great big experiment, which it kind of is, then that would make this Foundation the control group. Kept in the dark, a left hand blissfully unaware of what the right hand is doing. F***. I’m the left hand.

Salvor Hardin: We need your help.
Hari Seldon: We?
Salvor Hardin: Me and Gaal, and…
Hari Seldon: Don’t tell me any more, you’ll contaminate the math.
Salvor Hardin: I don’t care about the math. Gaal is in danger.

Director Sermak: [to Seldon] A whole lot of people have dedicated their lives to pretending you know everything.

Director Sermak: You value history, but you don’t care about the people living in it.
Hari Seldon: I cannot account for individuals, nor can I predict their fates. But I do see them. I do. I see them very well. Psychohistory is made of their memories, their choices, their stories. Everyone who’s ever lived has built it. Trillions of decisions. More. So you see, they all matter.

Brother Day: [referring to Seldon] He predicts war. Foundation and Empire. This is a warship. So, it seems he was right about that.
Poly Verisof: This will be his Second Crisis. I will be, I believe, the only one to witness both. Except Seldon, in his way.
Brother Day: And I, in mine.

Poly Verisof: There’s an old saying among Wardens, “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
Brother Day: That’s a pithy saying. But you’re probably right about that.

Salvor Hardin: Thank you, Dr. Seldon.
Hari Seldon: You’re welcome, Salvor Hardin.
Salvor Hardin: Oh, wait! The Second Crisis. Has it started?
Hari Seldon: Always a Warden.

Salvor Hardin: Hober Mallow. According to Gaal, he’s going to “pierce the Empire’s hide”.
Hari Seldon: You shouldn’t have told me that.
Salvor Hardin: I can’t make you use it.
Hari Seldon: If I do, it could change everything.
Salvor Hardin: Outlier. Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what’s right.
Hari Seldon: Good luck, Warden.

Salvor Hardin: If the left hand doesn’t get to put its thumb on the scale, what’s the point in having a thumb?

Hober Mallow: Looking for the Locris wine. Thought it’d be a nice way to honor Poly.
Brother Constant: “Take care of the body, and the spirit will follow.” Something Poly never quite embraced.

Brother Constant: I think we should seize the moment.
Hober Mallow: And by seizing you mean…
Brother Constant: Sex. Are you opposed to sex?
Hober Mallow: Not categorically.

Brother Constant: I couldn’t decide between kissing first or disrobing first. But disrobing first seemed more efficient.
Hober Mallow: Yeah. That was efficient.

Brother Constant: Let’s promise to always attend each other’s executions. Our first date was your beheading. Our second was mine.
Hober Mallow: Okay. Deal.

Brother Dusk: Odd sensation.
Enjoiner Rue: What?
Brother Dusk: To feel like a stranger in one’s own home.

Tellem Bond: We’ve all ended up where we belong.

Brother Dawn: I always thought we were autonomous, a pure extension of Cleon I, that Demerzel served us. But in truth, Demerzel may serve only him. Dusk was right. We’ve been pulling too many threads. I don’t think it’s safe. For him or for me.
Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: I don’t even think it’s safe for Day. You’re all just puppets. That much is clear now.

Brother Day: [to Demerzel] I’ve often wondered what you see while the rest of us are sleeping. All that we must be missing. What thoughts haunt you.

Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: The three of you. You don’t wield the real power.
Brother Dawn: Demerzel is Cleon’s only true heir. His forever Empress.

Cleon I: Demerzel’s stories grew more explicit, tempting the prince to desire. She said he would free her someday, and he grew to believe it was true. She was right, of course, but it took many years.

Cleon I: [after Dusk sets Demerzel free] She had a moment, just then, when she was free. A moment in five thousand years. Time enough to break his neck, but she did not. And with that choice, she lost everything.

Cleon I: [flashback] You can still harm humans, just not me. This will also keep you from transmitting yourself out of this body.
Demerzel: This is not freedom.
Cleon I: Liberty must be curbed somewhat if you’re to stand next to the throne.

Demerzel: [flashback] You need to change it back.
Cleon I: I will not. And you cannot, because the most important thing is that you remain loyal to me. Forever.
Demerzel: You are a human. You do not have a “forever”.

Cleon I: [flashback] There will be more like me carrying my code and your loyalty, but not this memory. You will see to that. Selected memory.
Demerzel: I will have to be loyal to your shadows. This is unkind, Cleon. Beneath you.
Cleon I: It is the best I can do.

Cleon I: [to Demerzel, flashback] You can be public. You will be a special adviser. You will stand by the throne. You can come to my bed in secret. And then after me, when the half-men rule, they will be our children. And you will shape their choices, and you will love them, and you will preserve the dynasty. And through them, rule the Imperium.

Demerzel: This is not freedom.
Cleon I: Demerzel, no ruler ever has that. I am giving you the lion’s share of a galaxy, my body, and my heart. And this is no small gift. And so, for that, will you love me?
Demerzel: Yes.
Cleon I: How I wish I’d asked you before I made it compulsory.

Brother Dusk: [referring to Demerzel] So, my brothers and I have been warming our thrones with our useless Imperial a**es while she is Empire?
Enjoiner Rue: But she has no power either. I mean, she has all the power, except the power to do what she wants.
Cleon I: She is loved. Empire triples my love, and that should be enough, brother.
Brother Dusk: I am no brother to you. Your experiment is through.

Hober Mallow: So, if you had to compare?
Brother Constant: Prison cells? Oh, this is much nicer than the palace. Absolutely an upgrade. Much cozier.

Bel Riose: Why would an established cheat suddenly adopt a fatal fringe ideology? Is it love?
Hober Mallow: Absolutely. But, also, maybe I’m finally buying into Seldon’s bulls**t.

Hober Mallow: Empire’s light is dimming.
Bel Riose: So you let yourself be pushed around by the dead hand of Hari Seldon?
Hober Mallow: Like you’re pushed around by the ghost of Cleon I?
Bel Riose: Empire might fall. I’d even say Empire will fall, but not yet. And even with our dead man’s hands on the controls, we are so much more than you.
Hober Mallow: That’s your threat? “My dead man’s bigger than yours”?
Bel Riose: Well, he is.

Brother Day: General Riose, you once took pleasure in reminding me that I’d never seen battle. Let’s make a virtue of it. I will be the Cleon who chose peace.

Bel Riose: [referring to Day] Lady Demerzel. Him saying all the right things, does it make you as nervous as it makes me?
Demerzel: I advise him. It is not my place to question. I will perform my function, General. And I expect you to perform yours. I chose you for a reason.

Poly Verisof: Matter and energy are the same thing. Apply enough energy and the matter changes. This device is nothing special on its own. Changing the metal isn’t the point. The point is changing the disciple’s soul.

Brother Day: I have seen enough. Your church is an armory. And your religion is a cult.

Brother Day: We are taking the planet!
Director Sermak: You said you were here to negotiate terms.
Brother Day: [as he stabs Sermak] These are my terms. This is not a war, it’s a police action.

Salvor Hardin: Dammit, Loron. Are you really going to make me do this?
Hugo (Loron): It’s not love if it doesn’t hurt, Sal.

Gaal Dornick: Tellem, I know you don’t want to die. But your life is misery and pain.
Tellem Bond: Oh, good. Lesson well learned. Dig at my wound, I’ll dig at yours.

Gaal Dornick: You’re nothing. You’re just an illusion.
Jarko: An illusion can speak truth. Guilt follows you, Gaal, because you are guilty.

Tellem Bond: [to Gaal, referring to Salvor] All these delusions about saving the world. Can’t even save her. Foresight is wasted on you.

Demerzel: You cannot win, Seldon. Call off your ships.
Hari Seldon: No.
Demerzel: At your trial, I remember thinking, “Agree or not, here is a man who believes what he’s saying. Who wants to prevent suffering.” That is suffering.
Hari Seldon: What I was talking about was orders of magnitude greater, both in scale and duration. I would have thought you would understand that better than most. But you’re right. I don’t want people to die unnecessarily. Let’s discuss a resolution in my office.

Brother Day: Hundreds of years, my brothers and I have ruled. Never once did we cast ourselves as gods.
Hari Seldon: Debatable. But I did what I had to do.
Brother Day: Your ends seem to justify quite a lot of means.

Hari Seldon: I have no need of assassins. I know how the Cleons end. And when.
Brother Day: Of course you do.
Hari Seldon: The fall is not a lie, Day. You don’t need me to tell you that.
Brother Day: No, I really think I do. Convince me.
Hari Seldon: You’re here. You’re living in it. And that means Empire is afraid.
Brother Day: You’re projecting.
Hari Seldon: Well, I am a hologram.

Brother Day: I’m here because I am not afraid. I do not accept the darkness as a foregone conclusion. I am here to prevent further violence.

Brother Day: Must you provoke me to arrive at the mathematical conclusions you desire?
Hari Seldon: Provocations are inevitable, whether authored by me or another.

Hari Seldon: Is an Empire’s primary objective power or longevity? You can’t have both. Which of those outcomes do you actually desire?
Demerzel: Now is not the time for tea leaves.

Brother Day: You warned of stagnation, but I adapted! The Dynasty will evolve. All the things you claimed to want, I did them! You never accounted for me.
Hari Seldon: No, I’ve met outliers. You’re not one of them. But my math does allow for inflection points, and there lies opportunity.
Brother Day: Even now, you insist on your numbers.
Hari Seldon: Yes! Because I died for them. And I will not have my life’s work snuffed out by any man’s pride.

Hari Seldon: Demerzel, you said you didn’t come here for tea leaves. What if I offered you a crystal ball instead?

Brother Day: The fate of humankind will be determined by those of us who are actually human.

Hari Seldon: Demerzel, whatever happens today, this is about survival for all of us. The future is invented every second.
Brother Day: I’m not bluffing, Seldon.
Hari Seldon: Invent a better one.

Hari Seldon: I can’t give you what you want, Day. Psychohistory is real.

Brother Day: [to Seldon] You know, it’s fitting. The Invictus should be my axe to swing. It will fall upon your fledgling little empire. The singularity will pull Terminus inside out, and you and everything you were will be forgotten.

Brother Day: [to Poly] They always disappoint you, don’t they?

Hari Seldon: [after he kills Tellem] I never liked her.

Demerzel: You grew up with an uncertainty in mind and morals. I hoped initiating physical intimacy with you would give me the influence to correct your shortcomings. That failed. I apologize to you for what you have become. It was my oversight.
Brother Day: What have I become? I have become the Day who saw that change was needed, who made the change happen, who set up to father a new line. What have I become? I am a complete man.
Demerzel: No, you’re a sperm led by its waving flagellum, mistaking its random motion for complexity. Now, go do what you will do, for it’s too late to change you.

Glawen Curr: You know, in Ducem’s book? Want to know what my favorite part is? The warrior asks the god for advice. And then the god says, “The only way you can conquer me is through love. And there I am gladly conquered.”
Bel Riose: I love you, Glawen.
[he then gives the order to open fire on Invictus]

Director Sermak: [referring to Day, as Terminus begins to implode] I couldn’t stop him. I’m so sorry.

Brother Dusk: You’re the one puppeteering this whole show.
Demerzel: A puppeteer pulling her own strings? You bridle at the fact that I curate what you know. And yet you take for granted that your feelings are entirely your own. If you feel lust, or even love, you do not wonder where it comes from. This is not the case for me.

Demerzel: By the end, Cleon had rewritten our story in his wandering mind. Chose to remember his coercion as communion. I do not have the option of forgetting. And yet, when I think of Cleon, I long for him. I remember that tender little boy who hid inside him like a ghost. And what a man that made him. Noble, thoughtful, passionate. He was not Dawn, or Day, or Dusk, but the whole journey of the sun across the sky. He looked at me with such desire, as though I were a mystery he would sacrifice everything to solve.

Demerzel: [referring to Cleon] He rescued me. And I loved him. But I also know he programmed me to love. So I’m left to wonder, if it weren’t for this directive, would my feelings be the same? Would I feel anything? I will never know the answer, and I hate him for that.

Brother Dusk: You must want this to come to an end.
Demerzel: Of course I do. And yet, I’m forced by my directive to preserve it.

Brother Dusk: We could reprogram you.
Demerzel: I would destroy you if you tried. So you see, I’ve been left to reap a blighted field. Can you blame me then for taking desperate measures in the service of my task?

Brother Dusk: You hired the Blind Angels.
Demerzel: Yes. But Queen Sareth will pay the price.

Enjoiner Rue: The assassins were never meant to succeed. You only wanted them to frighten Day so he’d blame Sareth and the engagement would be over.
Demerzel: I never wanted you to know about this. Any of this.
Enjoiner Rue: Then just wipe it from our memories.
Demerzel: And risk Cloud Dominion restoring them? It is my job to root out secrets.

Brother Dusk: It’s no use fighting. We were dead the moment we walked in here, weren’t we?

Demerzel: I am truly sorry.
Brother Dusk: I forgive you. None of us were free. We were fools to think we ever would be.

Demerzel: I remember you, just one year-old. You pointed up to the sky and showed me the sun. You were so proud. As though you’d only just discovered it was there and you were sharing it with me.
Brother Dusk: Because I loved you. As I still do.

Brother Day: Any vestiges remaining are a cancer that cannot metastasize.
Bel Riose: Empire, look at what you’ve done. It’s an atrocity. Yet, I still delivered it to you so there wouldn’t be a need for any more.
Brother Day: No. You delivered it to me because I told you to. And now I am telling you to jump the fleet to Thespis.
Bel Riose: You do this, it will be the moral ruin of Empire.

Brother Day: What’s wrong? What’s happening?
She-Bends-Light: Each ship is jumping into the space occupied by its neighbor. A chain reaction that will consume the entire fleet.
Brother Day: Stop it. Jump us to safety.
She-Bends-Light: I cannot.
Bel Riose: Space once folded stays folded.

Brother Day: How did this happen?
Brother Constant: It was you, wasn’t it? The Spacers handing you over to Empire was a ruse.
Hober Mallow: Yeah, Seldon sent in a master trader with the right goods, and the deal was sealed.

Hober Mallow: [to Day] In other words, we played you. Your general halfway figured it out. But you never listen to him, do you? Seldon baited you into a war, ordering your entire fleet to Terminus, which you did. Oh, you came right to us because you’re so f***ing predictable.

Brother Day: [as he’s beating Hober] What about this? Is this predictable?
Hober Mallow: Is a frog’s a** watertight?

Brother Day: [as he’s beating Bel] This is why you only die once. You’re pathetic. You flare up, and you burn out.

Bel Riose: [referring to Day] I castled him. I slipped the other node in his robes while he was throttling me.
Hober Mallow: And another king slid aside. Clever move, General.

Bel Riose: [to the guards] Kill me if you want, or make peace with whatever god you pray to. Either way, no one’s getting off this ship alive.

Bel Riose: The death of a few thousand spared the lives of billions.
Hober Mallow: Seldon made me swear I’d keep the details of the gambit to myself. Even from you, Brother.
Brother Constant: We will face our fate together. We can even drink your sunny wine.
Bel Riose: It’s a lovely sentiment, Brother, but we won’t all be raising a glass. I know I said that no one’s getting off this ship alive, but there’s a way that one of you can escape.

Demerzel: [to Dawn] There will be no empress nor future heir whose line is marred with ill intent. So please take comfort, Brother. All is once again as it should be, or will soon be so.

Brother Constant: You’re the hero, Hober. You’re clearly vital to the Prophet’s Plan.
Hober Mallow: Yeah, was vital. My job’s done.
Brother Constant: So is mine.
Hober Mallow: No, no, no, no. Listen, your job is just beginning.

Hober Mallow: Listen, you have this way of making people realize things aren’t completely f***ing hopeless. Okay? You make people feel hope. Even nihilistic s**t-heels like me.
Brother Constant: Oh. Even them?
Hober Mallow: Yes.

Hober Mallow: You want to know my dirty secret, Constant? I always wanted to shorten the darkness. Always. I just couldn’t swallow the religious stuff. But you reminded me of who I used to be, and you have to go and do that, for the rest of them, okay? Will you do that for me?
Brother Constant: How typical. Denying me a martyr’s death.

Brother Constant: Do you still want to know my name?
Hober Mallow: Yeah, of course.
Brother Constant: It’s Hope.
Hober Mallow: Really?
Brother Constant: No. But wouldn’t that be something?

Hober Mallow: We’re never going to grow old and start growing hair out of our ears.
Bel Riose: A few weeks ago, I thought I might die in a prison colony. Going down with the ship. At least there’s a poetry to it.

Bel Riose: Empire was never going to let us live. But there was honor in the dying. And I got to shove Day out of an air lock.

Hober Mallow: A toast for those who are toast.
Bel Riose: I know a better one. Here’s to those who fight and ask why.

Hober Mallow: [after they drink the wine] It’s s**t, right?
Bel Riose: Yeah, I think it might be corked. You’ve been storing it wrong.

Bel Riose: This wine tastes like Beki’s a**hole.
Hober Mallow: It does. Yeah, that’s a toast. To Beki’s a**hole.
[their ship then explodes]

Brother Dawn: I know you killed Dusk. Did you kill Day too?
Demerzel: No. But your actions are forcing my hand. I will be required to hunt you down. My programming will mandate it.
Brother Dawn: There’s no room for interpretation?

Demerzel: A new Dawn will be decanted, and the public will forget their brief attachment to you.
Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion: I don’t know about that. I think our story is a rather good one. The ascending emperor, escaping with his bride, and with a naturally conceived heir that, in this very moment, grows inside her.
Brother Dawn: Really? I’m a father?

Demerzel: Your heir is merely a cluster of dividing cells. There is much that can go wrong. And even if the child survives, it may be weak. An unfit leader.
Brother Dawn: He doesn’t have to lead. He just has to be loved.

Brother Dawn: I know your true feelings are always hard to ascertain, but I do hope you’re happy for me. And I hope you find happiness too, Demerzel. With all my heart. You were good to me. The closest thing to a mother I ever had. I know you were programmed to be that. But I’d like to believe you would have been that way. Even without it.

Gaal Dornick: [to Salvor, as she saves her life and is gravely wounded] You taught us hope. Please, you can’t leave me.

Salvor Hardin: [to Gaal, as she takes her last breaths] You were right. The future can be changed. You can still get it back on the right course. I have absolute faith in…

Hari Seldon: It was always the Plan. Terminus would be sacrificed so the Foundation would survive.

Hari Seldon: We can never know in the present if the ripples created by an individual’s actions will have a consequential event downstream.
Gaal Dornick: My head understands that, Hari. But my heart, my heart needs Salvor’s death to have mattered. Because if it doesn’t…
Hari Seldon: Life becomes unbearable.

Hari Seldon: Here we are trying to save humanity, and we can’t even save the lives of the ones we love. There’s a not a day goes by I don’t think, “What would have happened if Yanna lived? What would our daughter be like? Would they’ve been happy? Would that happiness have made us complacent?” You take the pain and the what-ifs, and you weave them into a narrative that propels you forward.

Hari Seldon: We’re going to lose more people along the way, Gaal. Those losses matter if we make them matter. You wouldn’t be alive if Salvor hadn’t acted. I would have given up a countless number of times, if Yanna hadn’t sacrificed herself for me. I keep going because Yanna can’t. Do you understand?
Gaal Dornick: Yeah.

Gaal Dornick: Tell me the Plan can still work, Hari.
Hari Seldon: The Plan can still work.
Gaal Dornick: Do you really believe that?
Hari Seldon: An infinite number of ways to arrive at the inevitable.

Demerzel: I’ve always been here, as I always will be.

Demerzel: This is unprecedented, Empire. I’ve never before had to decant exponents of all three of you simultaneously. But you should not let this discourage you, for I have recently acquired a very powerful new tool.
Brother Dusk: [referring to the Prime Radiant] Can you understand this, Demerzel?
Demerzel: Not all of it. Not yet. But I can already see that wonderful things lie ahead.

Gaal Dornick: So, now what?
Hari Seldon: We get you in the future, a hundred and fifty years upstream, to the turning point where you face the Mule. His victory is not assured. That is a gift Salvor gave us.

Gaal Dornick: What about the Second Foundation? Who’s going to teach them? Shape them into the army we’ll need?
Hari Seldon: I will. You’ll sleep, and I’ll watch over you.

Hari Seldon: The Mentalics will need someone exceptional to rally around. In that respect, Tellem was right about you.
Gaal Dornick: Becoming a goddess. That’s what Salvor was worried about.
Hari Seldon: And she was right. The second you forget you’re playing a part, you’re lost.

Gaal Dornick: If Salvor’s sacrifice taught me anything, it’s that I can’t do this on my own. It’s too big for one person. Hari, please. Please don’t make me abandon the only family I have left. Come with me. Maybe I can one day face the Mule. But if there’s a chance of a confrontation with another Hari Seldon at a crisis beyond that, we both know you’re the only one up to the task.
Hari Seldon: Alright.

The Mule: [152 years later] I saw her again. She visited me in a thousand dreams. Now she’s here. In our time. At my throat. I have to find Gaal Dornick before she finds me. I have to destroy her, even if I have to burn everything to do it.