When I feel difficulty coming on, I switch to another book I'm writing. When I get back to the problem, my unconscious has solved it.

I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it.

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Intuition is the art, peculiar to the human mind, of working out the correct answer from data that is, in itself, incomplete or even, perhaps, misleading.

Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world.

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

I wanted to be a psychological engineer, but we lacked the facilities, so I did the next best thing - I went into politics. It's practically the same thing.