Each generation of rabbis is necessarily less perfect than the rabbis that came before, since each generation is more removed from the perfection of the Garden. Therefore, no rabbi is allowed to overturn any of his forebears' wisdom, since they are all, by definition, smarter than him.

I can't go underground for a year, ten years, my whole life, waiting for freedom to be handed to me. Freedom is something you have to take for yourself.

... I think that I was too self-centered to ever develop good skills as a peacemaker. In my younger days, I assumed that it was because I was smarter than everyone else, with no patience for explaining things in short words for mouthbreathers who just didn't get it.

Where there's life, there's hope. Living people can change things, dead people cannot.

Carlton Mellick III is one of bizarro fiction's most talented practitioners, a virtuoso of the surreal, science fictional tale.

Any outfit that can't figure out clean toilets and decent theming on its own can't benefit from my advice.

It's hard not to like Asimov; he's a really likable guy.