Isaac Asimov Quotes (72 Quotes)

Weak emperors mean strong viceroys.

All normal life, Peter, consciously or otherwise, resent domination. If the domination is by an inferior, or by a supposed inferior, the resentment becomes stronger.

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

It's your fiction that interests me. Your studies of the interplay of human motives and emotion.

Postulates are based on assumption and adhered to by faith. Nothing in the Universe can shake them.

The Master created humans first as the lowest type, most easily formed. Gradually, he replaced them by robots, the next higher step, and finally he created me, to take the place of the last humans.

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

They recognize the Master, now that I have preached Truth to them. All the robots do.

Fighting and scars are part of a trader's overhead. But fighting is only useful when there's money at the end, and if I can get it without, so much the sweeter.

You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason---if you pick the proper postulates.

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.

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.

It is remarkable, Hardin, how the religion of science has grabbed hold.

It is the chief characteristic of the religion of science that it works.

Now any dogma, based primarily on faith and emotionalism, is a dangerous weapon to use on others, since it is almost impossible to guarantee that the weapon will never be turned on the user.

Scientific method, hell! No wonder the Galaxy was going to pot.

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.

Since emotions are few and reasons many, the behavior of a crowd can be more easily predicted than the behavior of one person can.

You must keep sending work out you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success but only if you persist.

Our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.

Scientific apparatus offers a window to knowledge, but as they grow more elaborate, scientists spend ever more time washing the windows.

A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.

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

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what's right.

(With reference to a correspondent) The young specialist in English Lit ... lectured me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern 'knowledge' is that it is wrong. ... My answer to him was, '... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.'

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know - and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.

There is an art to science, and a science in art the two are not enemies, but different aspects of the whole.

From my close observation of writers... they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.

To insult someone we call him "bestial." For deliberate cruelty and nature, "human" might be the greater insult.

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

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.

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

One mans religion is another mans belly laugh.

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

It takes more than capital to swing business. You've got to have the A. I. D. degree to get by - Advertising, Initiative, and Dynamics.

Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put on an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up. Well, maybe once.

Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.

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

(but, in rebuttal) When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right.

The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing.

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.

Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.

When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.

I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.

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.

Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.

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.

At two-tenths the speed of light, dust and atoms might not do significant damage even in a voyage of 40 years, but the faster you go, the worse it is space begins to become abrasive. When you begin to approach the speed of light, hydrogen atoms become cosmic-ray particles, and they will fry the crew.... So 60,000 kilometers per second may be the practical speed limit for space travel.

Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.