Isaac Asimov Quotes

In fact, once when I imprinted on a young lady's lips a chaste and fatherly kiss for about five minutes, I stopped and said, sorrowfully, "Wouldn't you rather be kissed by a twenty-one-year-old boy?"
She frowned and said, "Of course not. If you'd ever been kissed by a twenty-one-year-old boy you'd know better than to ask."
Remember that. In any direct competition, the old man is bound to win and the young man knows it.

I am not responsible for what other people think. I am responsible only for what I myself think, and I know what that is. No idea I've ever come up with has ever struck me as a divine revelation. Nothing I have ever observed leads me to think there is a God watching over me.

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.

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

The vast majority, who believe in astrology and think that the planets have nothing better to do than form a code that will tell them whether tomorrow is a good day to close a business deal or not, become all the more excited and enthusiastic.

Where history concerns mainly personalities, the drawings become either black or white according to the interests of the writer.

That even the most casual of compliments can be given that extra little touch that women adore.

It is well-known that the friend of a conqueror is but the last victim.

So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You'd better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can't rearrange the universe.

The clown's eyes sidled towards her, then drew away quickly. But they kept me away from you earlier-and, on my word, you may laugh, but I was lonely for missing friendship.

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.

It was a sign of decaying culture, of course, that dams had been built against the further development of ideas.

I am the beneficiary of a lucky break in the genetic sweepstakes.

Night will always be a time of fear and insecurity, and the heart will sink with the sun.

A moving finger having once written could never be lured back to unwrite.

The easiest way to solve a problem is to deny it exists.

I am afraid a monster is grown that will devour all of us. Yet we must fight him.

Lord Dorwin, gentlemen, in five days of discussion didn't say one damned thing, and said it so you never noticed.

Why do you think it is stupid to go to windows instead of to doors?"

"Because you advertise what you're trying to hide, silly. If I have a secret, I don't put tape over my mouth and let everyone know I have a secret. I talk just as much as usual, only about something else. Didn't you ever read any of the sayings of Salvor Hardin? He was our first Mayor, you know."

"Yes, I know."

"Well, he used to say that only a lie that wasn't ashamed of itself could possibly succeed. He also said that nothing had to be true, but everything had to sound true. Well, when you come in through a window, it's a lie that's ashamed of itself and it doesn't sound true."

"Then what would you have done?"

"If I had wanted to see my father on top secret business, I would have made his acquaintance openly and seen him about all sorts of strictly legitimate things. And then when everyone knew all about you and connected you with my father as a matter of course, you could be as top secret as you wanted and nobody would ever think of questioning it.

Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.

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.

It is as much my job to prevent harm to mankind as a whole as yours is to prevent harm to man as an individual.

This game the Persian Magi did invent, The force of Eastern wisdom to express: From thence to busy Europeans sent, And styled by modern Lombards pensive chess.

Give us but the chance and a new generation of Earthmen would grow to maturity, lacking insularity and believing wholeheartedly in the oneness of Man.

One way of saving on energy use would be to do away with unnecessary transportation. For instance, people commute between work and home, or travel long distances to engage in business conferences. With the development of improved communications and increasing automation, it will become possible in the not-too-distant future, for people to control and maintain business operations and machinery at a distance. The

There is no Master but the Master," he said, "and QT-1 is his prophet.

It's just that old people always think young people haven't really learned about love; and young people think that old people have forgotten about love; and, you know, they're both wrong.

And it came to pass that AC learned how to reverse the direction of entropy. But there was now no man to whom AC might give the answer of the last question. No matter. The answer
by demonstration
would take care of that, too. For another timeless interval, AC thought how best to do this. Carefully, AC organized the program.
The consciousness of AC encompassed all of what had been a Universe and brooded over what was now Chaos. Step by step, it must be done.
And AC said, "LET THERE BE LIGHT!"
And there was light

I think you are wrong, partner Elijah. My briefing on human characteristics here among the people of Earth includes the information that, unlike the men of the Outer Worlds, they are trained from birth to accept authority. Apparently this is the result of your way of living. One man, representing authority firmly enough, was quite sufficient, as I proved. Your own desire for a squad car was only an expression, really, of your almost instinctive wish for superior authority to take responsibility out of your hands. On my own world, I admit that what I did would have been most unjustified.

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.

The tyranny that now exists is actual. That which may exist in the future is potential. If we are always to draw back from change with the thought that the change may be for the worse, then there is no hope at all of ever escaping injustice.

Ben Estes knew he was going to die and it didn't make him feel any better to know that that was the chance he had lived with all these years.

To Mankind
And the hope that the war against folly
may someday be won after all.

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.

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

If it were evenly distributed," said Rodman, "the example of justice in the world might lead at last to a sane world policy. As it is, there is world despair and fury over the selfish fortune of a few, and all behave irrationally in revenge.

Science does not promise absolute truth, nor does it consider that such a thing necessarily exists. Science does not even promise that everything in the Universe is amenable to the scientific process.

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

Yet there was this to be said for unfavorable relationships in the wealth-distribution equation. It meant the existence of a leisure class and the development of an attractive way of life which, at its best, encouraged culture and grace. As long as the other end of the scale was not too badly off, as long as the leisure classes did not entirely forget their responsibilities while enjoying their privileges, as long as their culture took no obviously unhealthy turn, there was always the tendency in Eternity to forgive the departure from the ideal wealth-distribution pattern and to search for other, less attractive maladjustments.

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

Writing is my only interest. Even speaking is an interruption.

One might accept death reasoningly, with every aspect of the conscious mind, but the body was a brute beast that knew nothing of reason.

Could he tell her any of this? Of course not. Could he tell her that women almost never qualified for Eternity because, for some reason he did not understand (Computers might, but he himself certainly did not), their abstraction from Time was from ten to a hundred times as likely to distort Reality as was the abstraction of a man.

He threw his cigar away and looked up at the outstretched Galaxy. "Back to oil and coal, are they?" he murmured - and what the rest of his thoughts were he kept to himself.

It is a difficult choice sometimes whether to feel revolted at the male sex or merely to dismiss them as contemptible.

To him, a stilted geometric love of arrangement was "system," and indefatigable and feverish interest in the pettiest facets of day-to-day bureaucracy was "industry", indecision when right was "caution", and blind stubbornness when wrong, "determination.

Why this reluctance to make the change? We fear the process of reeducation.

The Sun burned down in a warm contrasting world of white and black, of white Sun against black sky and white rolling ground mottled with black shadow. The bright sweet smell of the Sun on every exposed square centimeter of metal contrasting with the creeping death-of-aroma on the other side.

He lifted his hand and stared at it, counting the fingers. Hot-hot-hot-turning, putting each finger, one by one, into the shadow of the others and the hot slowly dying in a change in tactility that made him feel the clean, comfortable vacuum.

Yet not entirely vacuum. He straightened and lifted both arms over his head, stretching them out, and the sensitive spots on either wrist felt the vapors- the thin, faint touch of tin and lead rolling through the cloy of mercury.

The thicker taste rose from his feet; the silicates of each variety, marked by the clear separate-and-together touch and tang of each metal ion. He moved one foot slowly through the crunchy, caked dust, and felt the changes like a soft, not quite random symphony.

And over all the Sun. He looked up at it, large and fat and bright and hot, and heard its joy. He watched the slow rise of prominences around its rim and listened to the crackling sound of each; and to the other happy noises over the broad face. When he dimmed the background light, the red of the rising wisps of hydrogen showed in bursts of mellow contralto, and the deep bass of the spots amid the muted whistling of the wi

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.

You can't assert an answer just because it's not something else.

Baley distrusted overstatement and had no liking for the armchair deducer who discovered certainty rather than probability in the workings of logic.

Only a lie that wasn't ashamed of itself could possibly succeed

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

You don't need to predict the future. Just choose a future
a good future, a useful future
and make the kind of prediction that will alter human emotions and reactions in such a way that the future you predicted will be brought about. Better to make a good future than predict a bad one.

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

No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.

[What's exciting is] the actual process of broadening yourself, of knowing there's now a little extra facet of the universe you know about and can think about and can understand. It seems to me that when it's time to die, there would be a certain pleasure in thinking that you had utilized your life well, learned as much as you could, gathered in as much as possible of the universe, and enjoyed it. There's only this one universe and only this one lifetime to try to grasp it. And while it is inconceivable that anyone can grasp more than a tiny portion of it, at least you can do that much. What a tragedy just to pass through and get nothing out of it.

He was conscious only of the mightiest deed of man; the complete and almost contemptuously final conquest of a world.

It is possible to be too stable. No Outer World has colonized a new planet in two and a half centuries.. are lives too long to risk and too comfortable to upset.

"I don't know about that, Dr. Fastolfe. You've come to Earth. You risk disease."

"Yes, I do. There are some of us, Mr. Baley, who feel that the future of the human race is even worth the possible loss of an extended lifetime. Too few of us, I am sorry to say."

"In trying to introduce robots here on Earth, we're doing our best to upset the balance of your City economy."

"You mean you're creating a growing group of displaced and declassified men on purpose?"

"Not out of cruelty or callousness, believe me. A group of displaced men, as you call them, are what we need to serve as a nucleus for colonization. Your ancient America was discovered by ships fitted out with men from the prisons. Don't you see that the City's womb has failed the displaced man. He has nothing to lose and worlds to gain by leaving Earth.

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.

Ever since Alexander went to India, Greek kings used elephants in war, mainly for prestige. They were rarely any use. Unlike horses, they were far too intelligent to risk injury merely at a man's urging. It was easy to panic elephants to hastily retreat, trampling their own army.

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.

You are a military man and should know better. If there is one science into which man has probed continuously and successfully, it is that of military technology. No potential weapon would remain unrealized for ten thousand years.

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

'That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.' Is that it, Daneel?" Daneel paused, then said, "I am not certain what is meant by the smell of a rose, but if a rose on Earth is the common flower that is called a rose on Aurora, and if by its 'smell' you mean a property that can be detected, sensed, or measured by human beings, then surely calling a rose by another sound-combination - and holding all else equal - would not affect the smell or any other of its intrinsic properties.

He slept that night the sleep of a successfully stubborn man.

I don't subscribe to the thesis, 'Let the buyer beware,' I prefer the disregarded one that goes, 'Let the seller be honest.'

They met near the southern limit of the establishment grounds and for a while they spoke in an abbreviated and Aesopic language. They understood each other well, with many decades of communication behind them, and it was not necessary for them to involve themselves in all the elaboration's of human speech.

Daneel said in an all but unhearable whisper, "Clouds. Unseen."

Had Daneel been speaking for human ears, he would have said, "As you see, friend Giskard, the sky has clouded up. Had Madam Gladia waited her chance to see Solaria, she would not, in any case, have succeeded."

And Giskard's reply of "Predicted. Interview, rather," was the equivalent of "So much was predicted in the weather forecast, friend Daneel, and might have been used as an excuse to get Madam Gladia to bed early. It seemed to me to be more important, however, to meet the problem squarely and to persuade her to permit this interview I have already told you about.

Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.

Old men tend to forget what thought was like in their youth; they forget the quickness of the mental jump, the daring of the youthful intuition, the agility of the fresh insight. They become accustomed to the more plodding varieties of reason, and because this is more than made up by the accumulation of experience, old men think themselves wiser than the young.

Any decent politician is masochistic enough to dream now and then of going down in flames while the angels sing.

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.

Beliefs can't be shaken short of a major shock, in which case, a fairly complete mental discruption results. Mild cases - hysteria, morbid sense of insecurity. Advanced cases - madness and suicide.

I still can't quite grasp what you are telling me. I find it impossible to believe that there would be such unreasoning feeling against harmless people."
Amaryl said bitterly, "That's because you've never had any occasion to interest yourself in such things. It can all pass right under your nose and you wouldn't smell a thing because it doesn't affect you."
Dors said, "Mr. Amaryl, Dr. Seldon is a mathematician like you and his head can sometimes be in the clouds. You must understand that. I am a historian, however. I know that it isn't unusual to have one group of people look down upon another group. There are peculiar and almost ritualistic hatreds that have no rational justification and that can have their serious historical influence. It's too bad."
Saying something is 'too bad' is easy. You say you disapprove, which makes you a nice person, and then you can go about your own business and not be interested anymore. It's a lot worse than 'too bad.' It's against everything decent and natural. We're all of us the same, yellow-hairs and black-hairs, tall and short, Easterners, Westerners, Southerners, and Outworlders. We're all of us, you and I and even the Emperor, descended from the people of Earth, aren't we?

[A]ll knowledge is one. When a light brightens and illuminates a corner of a room, it adds to the general illumination of the entire room. Over and over again, scientific discoveries have provided answers to problems that had no apparent connection with the phenomena that gave rise to the discovery.

All sorts of computer errors are now turning up. You'd be surprised to know the number of doctors who claim they are treating pregnant men.

[Social] science fiction is that branch of literature which is concerned with the impact of scientific advance on human beings.

With both people and computers on the job, computer error can be more quickly tracked down and corrected by people and, conversely, human error can be more quickly corrected by computers. What it amounts to is that nothing serious can happen unless human error and computer error take place simultaneously. And that hardly ever happens.

When they sat down at a small table and punched in their orders,

Surely no child, and few adults, have ever watched a bird in flight without envy.

Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast.

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.

To all my gentle readers who have treated me with love for over 30 years, I must say farewell. 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, but that's not the way it worked out. I have had a long and happy life and I have no complaints about the ending, thereof, and so farewell - farewell.

It was a long time since he'd done any actual clinical work, and obviously his sojourn among the academics at Saro University had attenuated the professional detachment that allows members of the healing arts to confront the ill without being overwhelmed by compassion and sorrow. He was surprised at that, how tenderhearted he seemed to have become, how thin-skinned.

The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of physics, and if the probabilities of error are greater, it is only because history does not deal with as many humans as physics does atoms, so that individual variations count for more.

Stoop, then, or you will be beaten to your knees. Stoop voluntarily, and you may save a remnant. You have depended on metal and power and they have sustained you as far as they could. You have ignored mind and morale and they have failed you.

Even the purest and most high-minded scientist finds it expedient sometimes to assault the fortress of truth with the blunt weapon of trail and error. sometimes it works beautifully.

All roads lead to Trantor, and that is where all stars end.

Interregnum - between

when the old empire began to rot at the fringes, it could be considered that science, as science, had failed the outer worlds. To be re-accepted it would have to present itself in another guise

Whenever I have endured or accomplished some difficult task
such as watching television, going out socially or sleeping
I always look forward to rewarding myself with the small pleasure of getting back to my typewriter and writing something.

There's so much knowledge to be had that specialists cling to their specialties as a shield against having to know anything about anything else. They avoid being drowned.

Today, what people call learning is forced on you. Everyone is forced to learn the same thing on the same day at the same speed in class. But everyone is different. For some, class goes too fast, for some too slow, for some in the wrong direction. But give everyone a chance, in addition to school, to follow up their own bent from the start, to find out about whatever they're interested in by looking it up in their own homes, at their own speed, in their own time, and everyone will enjoy learning.

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?

I'll take that challenge. It's a dead hand against a living will.

It is enough for a Psychohistorian, as such, to know his Biostatistics and his Neurochemical Electromathematics. Some know nothing else and are fit only to be statistical technicians. But a Speaker must be able to discuss the Plan without mathematics.

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

Running? Jumping?" Anthony turned an anxious face to William. "He'll hurt himself. You can handle the Computer. Override. Make him stop."

And William said sharply, "No. I won't. I'll take the chance of his hurting himself. Don't you understand? He's happy. He was on Earth, a world he was never equipped to handle. Now he's on Mercury with a body perfectly adapted to its environment, as perfectly adapted as a hundred specialized scientists could make it be. It's paradise for him; let him enjoy it."

"Enjoy? He's a robot."

"I'm not talking about the robot. I'm talking about the brain-the brain-that's living here."

The Mercury Computer, enclosed in glass, carefully and delicately wired, its integrity most subtly preserved, breathed and lived.

"It's Randall who's in paradise," said William. "He's found the world for whose sake he autistically fled this one. He has a world his new body fits perfectly in exchange for the world his old body did not fit at all.

I am trying now to re-create in my mind the picture of the man as I saw him in 1939- he, the revered author of Sinister Barriers, I the novice. I think I can rely on my near-photographic memory for the purpose. (I call it "near-photographic" because I can only remember things that happen to be lying around near photographs.)

Let's see, as I recall, he is six-feet seven-inches tall (when he is sitting down, that is) with a long and majestic English face. Then, too, I distinctly remember, there was a small flashing golden aura about his head, the occasional play of hissing flashes when he moved it suddenly, and the distant rumble of thunder when he spoke.

You mean that this is a matter of patriotism and traders aren't patriotic?"
"Notoriously not. Pioneers never are.