Charles Austin Beard Quotes Hari Seldon

If a science of history were achieved, it would, like the science of celestial mechanics, make possible the calculable prediction of the future in history. It would bring the totality of historical occurrences within a single field and reveal the unfolding future to its last end, including all the apparent choices made and to be made. It would be omniscience. The creator of it would possess the attributes ascribed by the theologians to God. The future once revealed, humanity would have nothing to do except to await its doom.

Charles Austin Beard. 1933. "Written History as an Act of Fate." Annual address of the president of the American Historical Association, delivered at Urbana, Illinois. December 28, 1933. From the American Historical Review 39(2):219-231.

In case you were wondering, Isaac Asimov began Foundation in 1941 when he was only 21 years old; it's hard to know whether he would have read the American Historical Review when he was thirteen. If it was anybody but Asimov, you'd say absolutely not.