Isaac Asimov Quotes

There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Saying something is 'too bad' is easy. You say you disapprove, which makes you a nice person, and then you can go about your business and not be interested anymore. It's a lot worse than 'too bad.' It's against everything decent and natural.

Was there anything more exciting in life than seeking answers?

Naturally, since [the Sumerians] didn't know what caused the flood anymore than we do, they blamed the gods. (That's the advantage of religion. You're never short an explanation for anything.)

However much the creationist leaders might hammer away at their scientific and philosophical points, they would be helpless and a laughing-stock if that were all they had. It is religion that recruits their squadrons. Tens of millions of Americans, who neither know nor understand the actual arguments for - of even against - evolution, march in the army of the night, their Bibles held high. And they are a strong and frightening force, impervious to, and immunized against, the feeble lance of mere reason.

I'm gradually managing to cram my mind more and more full of things. I've got this beautiful mind and it's going to die, and it'll all be gone. And then I say, not in my case. Every idea I've ever had I've written down, and it's all there on paper. And I won't be gone; it'll be there.

All of a sudden, space isn't friendly. All of a sudden, it's a place where people can die. . . . Many more people are going to die. But we can't explore space if the requirement is that there be no casualties; we can't do anything if the requirement is that there be no casualties.

To make discoveries, you have to be curious about why the universe is the way it is.

Democracy cannot survive overpopulation.

There is nothing so eternally adhesive as the memory of power.

Flattery is useful when dealing with youngsters.

Thinking is the activity I love best, and writing to me is simply thinking through my fingers. I can write up to 18 hours a day. Typing 90 words a minute, I've done better than 50 pages a day. Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up-well, maybe once.

To introduce something altogether new would mean to begin all over, to become ignorant again, and to run the old, old risk of failing to learn.

Modern science fiction is the only form of literature that consistently considers the nature of the changes that face us.

When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent.

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

The temptation was great to muster what force we could and put up a fight. It's the easiest way out, and the most satisfactory to self-respect--but, nearly invariably, the stupidest.

... you just can't differentiate between a robot and the very best of humans.

I don’t believe in extraordinary concatenations of coincidence.

Uncertainty that comes from knowledge (knowing what you don't know) is different from uncertainty coming from ignorance.

What would I do if I knew I only had six months to live? Type faster.

Humanists recognize that it is only when people feel free to think for themselves, using reason as their guide, that they are best capable of developing values that succeed in satisfying human needs and serving human interests.

Scientists expect to be improved on and corrected; they hope to be

If a conclusion is not poetically balanced, it cannot be scientifically true.

And in man is a three-pound brain which, as far as we know, is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter in the universe.

It took me thirty-six years; and, in some fifty stories, ranging in length from short-shorts to novels, I think I must have touched, in one way or another, on every aspect of computers and computerization. And (mark this!) I did it without ever knowing anything at all about computers in any real sense. To this day, I don't. I am totally inept with machinery... on my typewriter I turn out books at the contemptible rate of one a month

Goodbye, Hari, my love. Remember always--all you did for me.” -I did nothing for you.” -You loved me and your love made me--human.

Life is a journey, but don't worry, you'll find a parking spot at the end.

The greatest inventors are unknown to us. Someone invented the wheel - but who?

Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all time low over the world.

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 want to be a human being, nothing more and nothing less. ... I don't suppose we can ever stop hating each other, but why encourage that by keeping the old labels with their ready-made history of millennial hate?