Isaac Asimov Quotes

While he lives, he must think; while he thinks, he must dream.

I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing — to be clear.

The age of the pulp magazine was the last in which youngsters, to get their primitive material, were forced to be literate.

Despite all that education and experience can do, I retain a certain level of unsophistication that I cannot eradicate and that my friends find amusing. In fact, I think I sometimes detect conspiratorial plottings among my friends to protect me against my own lack of sophistication. I don't mind. I suspect that I am never quite as unsophisticated as they think I am, but I don't mind.

Unfortunately, in many cases, people who write science fiction violate the laws of nature, not because they want to make a point, but because they don't know what the laws of nature are.

Many a prophecy, by the mere force of its being believed, is transmuted to fact.

I don’t like anything that’s got to be. I want to know why.

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'

Man's greatest asset is the unsettled mind.

Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.

Once, when a religionist denounced me in unmeasured terms, I sent him a card saying, "I am sure you believe that I will go to hell when I die, and that once there I will suffer all the pains and tortures the sadistic ingenuity of your deity can devise and that this torture will continue forever. Isn't that enough for you? Do you have to call me bad names in addition?"

People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence.

I type 90 words per minute on the typewriter; I type 100 words per minute on the word processor. But, of course, I don't keep that up indefinitely - every once in a while I do have to think a few seconds.

Writing is a lonely job. Even if a writer socializes regularly, when he gets down to the real business of his life, it is he and his type writer or word processor. No one else is or can be involved in the matter.

Every period of human development has had its own particular type of human conflict---its own variety of problem that, apparently, could be settled only by force. And each time, frustratingly enough, force never really settled the problem. Instead, it persisted through a series of conflicts, then vanished of itself---what's the expression---ah, yes, 'not with a bang, but a whimper,' as the economic and social environment changed. And then, new problems, and a new series of wars.

It is the writer who might catch the imagination of young people, and plant a seed that will flower and come to fruition.

One of Walt Whitman's best-known poems is this one: When I heard the learn'd astronomer,.... The trouble is, Whitman is talking through his hat, but the poor soul didn't know any better

We are reaching the stage where the problems we must solve are going to become insoluble without computers. I do not fear computers, I fear the lack of them.

If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.

On Earth, we are unmanned by our longing for a pastoral past that never really existed; and that, if it had existed, could never exist again...on the Moon, there is no past to long for or dream about. There is no direction but forward.

Although we will hate and fight the machines, we will be supplanted anyway, and rightly so, for the intelligent machines to which we will give birth may, better than we, carry on the striving toward the goal of understanding and using the Universe, climbing to heights we ourselves could never aspire to.

We're forever teetering on the brink of the unknowable, and trying to understand what can't be understood.

Many adults, whether consciously or unconsciously, find it beneath their adult dignity to do anything as childish as read a book, think a thought, or get an idea. Adults are rarely embarrased at having forgotten what little algebra or geography they once learned

The Bible contains legendary, historical, and ethical contents. It is quite possible to consider them separately, and one doesn't have to accept the legends in order to get the ethics. Fundamentalists make a grave mistake to insist on the letter of the writings, because they drive away many who can't swallow the Adam-and-Eve bit.

To bring about destruction by overcrowding, mass starvation, anarchy, the destruction of our most cherished values, there is no need to do anything. We need only do nothing except what comes naturally, and breed. And how easy it is to do nothing

It is change continuing change, inevitable change that is the dominant factor in society today.

I stand four-square for reason, and object to what seems to me to be irrationality, whatever the source. If you are on my side in this, I must warn you that the army of the night has the advantage of overwhelming numbers, and, by its very nature, is immune to reason, so that it is entirely unlikely that you and I can win out. We will always remain a tiny and probably hopeless minority, but let us never tire of presenting our view, and of fighting the good fight for the right.

Before another century is done it will be hard for people to imagine a time when humanity was confined to one world, and it will seem to them incredible that there was ever anybody who doubted the value of space and wanted to turn his or her back on the Universe.

The Earth faces environmental problems right now that threaten the imminent destruction of civilization and the end of the planet as a livable world. Humanity cannot afford to waste its financial and emotional resources on endless, meaningless quarrels between each group and all others. there must be a sense of globalism in which the world unites to solve the real problems that face all groups alike.

We all know we fall. Newton's discovery was that the moon falls, too-and by the same rule that we do.

The human mind works at low efficiency. Twenty percent is the figure usually given. When, momentarily, there is a flash of greater power, it is termed a hunch, or insight, or intuition.

No one suggests that writing about science will turn the entire world into a model of judgment and creative thought. It will be enough if they spread the knowledge as widely as possible.

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.

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.

Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence.

That's the harm of Close Encounters: that it convinces tens of millions that that's what just science fiction is.

There seems to be a feeling that anything that is natural is good. Strychnine is natural.

No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

And above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning.

To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

I prefer rationalism to atheism. The question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism, thus you don't have to waste your time in either attacking or defending.

What do you call that nice, shiny white metal they use to make sidings and airplanes out of? Aluminum, right? Aluminum, pronounced 'uh-LOO-mih-num', right? Anybody knows that! But do you know how the British spell it? 'Aluminium', pronounced 'Al-yoo-MIH-nee-um'. Ever hear anything so ridiculous? The French and Germans spell it 'aluminium', too, but they're foreigners who don't speak Earth-standard. You'd think the British, however, using our language, would be more careful

It is not only the living who are killed in war.

Mathematicians deal with large numbers sometimes, but never in their income.

Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil-but there is no way around them.

Fifty years," I hackneyed, "is a long time." "Not when you're looking back at them," she said. "You wonder how they vanished so quickly.

Knowledge is indivisible. When people grow wise in one direction, they are sure to make it easier for themselves to grow wise in other directions as well. On the other hand, when they split up knowledge, concentrate on their own field, and scorn and ignore other fields, they grow less wise - even in their own field.

People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.