Best 540 quotes of Isaac Asimov on MyQuotes

Isaac Asimov

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    Isaac Asimov

    If all human beings understood history, they might cease making the same stupid mistakes over and over.

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    Isaac Asimov

    If I am right, then (religious fundamentalists) will not go to Heaven, because there is no Heaven. If they are right, then they will not go to Heaven, because they are hypocrites.

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    Isaac Asimov

    I figure that if God actually does exist, he is big enough to understand an honest difference of opinion.

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    Isaac Asimov

    If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.

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    Isaac Asimov

    If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

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    Isaac Asimov

    If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.

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    Isaac Asimov

    If there is a category of human being for whom his work ought to speak for itself, it is the writer.

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    Isaac Asimov

    If we only obey those rules that we think are just and reasonable, then no rule will stand, for there is no rule that some will not think is unjust and unreasonable.

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    Isaac Asimov

    If you ask for too much, you lose even that which you have.

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    Isaac Asimov

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

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    Isaac Asimov

    If you're born in a cubicle and grow up in a corridor, and work in a cell, and vacation in a crowded sun-room, then coming up into the open with nothing but sky over you might just give you a nervous breakdown.

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    Isaac Asimov

    If you suspect that my interest in the Bible is going to inspire me with sudden enthusiasm for Judaism and make me a convert of mountain-moving fervor and that I shall suddenly grow long earlocks and learn Hebrew and go about denouncing the heathen - you little know the effect of the Bible on me. Properly read, it is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.

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    Isaac Asimov

    I have been told that a young would-be composer wrote to Mozart asking advice about how to compose a symphony. Mozart responded that a symphony was a complex and demanding form and it would be better to start with something simpler. The young man protested, 'But, Herr Mozart, you wrote symphonies when you were younger than I am now.' Mozart replied, 'I never asked how.

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    Isaac Asimov

    I have never, in all my life, not for one moment, been tempted toward religion of any kind. The fact is that I feel no spiritual void. I have my philosophy of life, which does not include any aspect of the supernatural and which I find totally satisfying. I am, in short, a rationalist and believe only that which reason tells me is so.

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    Isaac Asimov

    I have written 240 books on a wide variety of topics. . . . Some of it I based on education I received in my school, but most of it was backed by other ways of learning - chiefly in the books I obtained in the public library.

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    Isaac Asimov

    I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing-to be clear. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or symbolically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that might (if I were good enough) get me a Pulitzer prize. I would write merely clearly and in this way establish a warm relationship between myself and my readers, and the professional critics-Well, they can do whatever they wish.

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    Isaac Asimov

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

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    Isaac Asimov

    I'm an indoors person. I'm not afraid of the outdoors and I penetrate it easily and cheerfully. However, I must admit I like Central Park better than the wilderness, and I like the canyons of Manhattan better than Central Park, and I like the interior of my apartment better than the canyons of Manhattan, and I like my two rooms better with the shades down at all times than with the shades up. I'm not an agoraphobe at all, but I am a claustrophile, if you see the distinction.

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    Isaac Asimov

    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.

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    Isaac Asimov

    I'm not a speed reader. I'm a speed understander.

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    Isaac Asimov

    In all the known history of Mankind, advances have been made primarily in physical technology; in the capacity of handling the inanimate world about Man. Control of self and society has been left to to chance or to the vague gropings of intuitive ethical systems based on inspiration and emotion. As a result no culture of greater stability than about fifty-five percent has ever existed, and these only as the result of great human misery.

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    Isaac Asimov

    In a properly automated and educated world, then, machines may prove to be the true humanizing influence. It may be that machines will do the work that makes life possible and that human beings will do all the other things that make life pleasant and worthwhile

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    Isaac Asimov

    Increasingly, our leaders must deal with dangers that threaten the entire world, where an understanding of those dangers and the possible solutions depends on a good grasp of science. The ozone layer, the greenhouse effect, acid rain, questions of diet and heredity. All require scientific literacy. Can Americans choose the proper leaders and support the proper programs if they themselves are scientifically illiterate? The whole premise of democracy is that it is safe to leave important questions to the court of public opinion - but is it safe to leave them to the court of public ignorance?

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    Isaac Asimov

    Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today - but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.

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    Isaac Asimov

    Inertia! Our ruling class knows one law; no change. Despotism! They know one rule; force. Maldistribution! They know one desire; to hold what is theirs.

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    Isaac Asimov

    I never considered myself a patriot. I like to think I recognize only humanity as my nation.

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    Isaac Asimov

    In life, people will take you at your own reckoning.

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    Isaac Asimov

    In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.

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    Isaac Asimov

    In my life there have been several individuals whose presence made it easier for me to think, pleasanter to make my responses.

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    Isaac Asimov

    Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket.

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    Isaac Asimov

    Intelligence is an accident of evolution, and not necessarily an advantage.

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    Isaac Asimov

    Intelligence is an extremely subtle concept. It's a kind of understanding that flourishes if it's combined with a good memory, but exists anyway even in the absence of good memory. It's the ability to draw consequences from causes, to make correct inferences, to foresee what might be the result, to work out logical problems, to be reasonable, rational, to have the ability to understand the solution from perhaps insufficient information. You know when a person is intelligent, but you can be easily fooled if you are not yourself intelligent.

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    Isaac Asimov

    Intelligence is a valuable thing, but it is not usually the key to survival. Sheer fecundity ... usually counts. The intelligent gorilla doesn't do as well as the less intelligent but more-fecund rat, which doesn't do as well as the still-less-intelligent but still-more-fecund cockroach, which doesn't do as well as the minimally-intelligent but maximally-fecund bacterium.

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    Isaac Asimov

    In theory, there is nothing the computer can do that the human mind can not do. The computer merely takes a finite amount of data and performs a finite number of operations upon them. The human mind can duplicate the process

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    Isaac Asimov

    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.

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    Isaac Asimov

    I, on the other hand, am a finished product. I absorb electrical energy directly and utilize it with an almost one hundred percent efficiency. I am composed of strong metal, am continuously conscious, and can stand extremes of environment easily. These are facts which, with the self-evident proposition that no being can create another being superior to itself, smashes your silly hypothesis to nothing.

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    Isaac Asimov

    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.

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    Isaac Asimov

    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.

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    Isaac Asimov

    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.

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    Isaac Asimov

    Isn't it sad that you can tell people that the ozone layer is being depleted, the forests are being cut down, the deserts are advancing steadily, that the greenhouse effect will raise the sea level 200 feet, that overpopulation is choking us, that pollution is killing us, that nuclear war may destroy us - and they yawn and settle back for a comfortable nap. But tell them that the Martians are landing, and they scream and run.

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    Isaac Asimov

    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.

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    Isaac Asimov

    It has always been my ambition to die in harness with my head face down on a keyboard and my nose caught between two of the keys.

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    Isaac Asimov

    It is almost impossible to think of something no one has thought of before, but it is always possible to add different frills.

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    Isaac Asimov

    It is always useful, you see, to subject the past life of reform politicians to rather inquisitive research.

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    Isaac Asimov

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

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    Isaac Asimov

    It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. 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. This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our every man must take on a science fictional way of thinking.

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    Isaac Asimov

    It is in meeting the great tests that mankind can most successfully rise to great heights. Out of danger and restless insecurity comes the force that pushes mankind to newer and loftier conquests.

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    Isaac Asimov

    It is no defense of superstition and pseudoscience to say that it brings solace and comfort to people. . . . If solace and comfort are how we judge the worth of something, then consider that tobacco brings solace and comfort to smokers; alcohol brings it to drinkers; drugs of all kinds bring it to addicts; the fall of cards and the run of horses bring it to gamblers; cruelty and violence bring it to sociopaths. Judge by solace and comfort only and there is no behavior we ought to interfere with.

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    Isaac Asimov

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

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    Isaac Asimov

    It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong.