Top 100 Asimov Quotes
#1. The other one I did was 'I, Robot.' I take apart Isaac Asimov's Robots world.
Cory Doctorow
#2. I've read everything that Isaac Asimov ever wrote, for a start. I'm massively into my fantasy genre, anything by R.A. Salvatore or David Gemmell. I've read every single book those writers have written.
Robert Kazinsky
#3. My name is Bruce Feiler, and I'm an explainaholic. I first heard this word used to describe Isaac Asimov, and I knew instantly that I suffered from the same condition. It's the incurable desire to tell, shape, share, occasionally exaggerate, often elongate, and inevitably bungle a good story.
Bruce Feiler
#4. First of Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics:
A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Isaac Asimov
#5. But those stories inspire observations and experiments that do help us sort out what's going on. The science fiction novelist Isaac Asimov reportedly once said, "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny.
Frans De Waal
#6. I enjoyed reading all the classic authors like Isaac Asimov and Bradbury.
William Shatner
#7. In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best
science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction
writer.
[dedication to Isaac Asimov from Arthur C. Clarke in his book Report on Planet Three]
Arthur C. Clarke
#8. Creationists make it sound like a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. Isaac Asimov, Russian-born American author
George Washington
#9. I had the honor of speaking with Asimov. The album ended up being something not directly related to Asimov, but related instead to the concept of the power of robotics.
Alan Parsons
#10. For bedtime reading, I usually curl up with a good monograph on quantum physics or string theory, my specialty. But since I was a child, I have been fascinated by science fiction. My all-time favorite is 'The Foundation Trilogy,' by Isaac Asimov.
Michio Kaku
#11. I grew up reading Stephen King, Peter Straub, Clive Barker, Robert McCammon, Isaac Asimov's nonfiction books, and Roald Dahl.
Nnedi Okorafor
#12. It's hard not to like Asimov; he's a really likable guy.
Cory Doctorow
#13. A story in Asimov's is read by hundreds of thousands of people.
Greg Egan
#14. I am honorary President of the American Humanist Society, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that utterly functionless capacity. We Humanists behave as well as we can, without any rewards or punishments in an Afterlife.
Kurt Vonnegut
#15. And [Asimov]'ll sign anything, hardbacks, softbacks, other people's books, scraps of paper. Inevitably someone handed him a blank check on the occasion when I was there, and he signed that without as much as a waver to his smile - except that he signed: 'Harlan Ellison.
Isaac Asimov
#16. The ones that landed near the bathroom are Bad Tolkien imitations or transcripts of a D&D adventure; bad Herbert, Heinlein, and Asimov are below the television; and these on the bed are the ones whose authors I want to hunt down personally and slap.
Sharyn McCrumb
#17. Asimov was the reason why we changed some rules in the SFWA, and I'm not convinced we changed it for the best.
Jerry Pournelle
#18. I've written five books, a book every three years. I'm fairly lazy and it doesn't take that much ... people who are not lazy are Isaac Asimov ...
Ethan Canin
#19. Analog, or Asimov's Magazine, or The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
David Brin
#20. I came into science fiction at a very good time, when the doors were getting thrown open to all kinds of more experimental writing, more literary writing, riskier writing. It wasn't all imitation Heinlein or Asimov. And of course, women were creeping in, infiltrating. Infesting the premises.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#21. The pleasantness of their company outweighed the regret of their passing. On the whole, then, it is better to experience what you experience now than not to.
Isaac Asimov
#22. It is the obvious which is so difficult to see most of the time. People say 'It's as plain as the nose on your face.' But how much of the nose on your face can you see, unless someone holds a mirror up to you?
Isaac Asimov
#23. Human beings can tolerate an immortal robot, for it doesn't matter how long a machine lasts, but they cannot tolerate an immortal human being since their own mortality is endurable only so long as it is universal.
Isaac Asimov
#24. To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.
Isaac Asimov
#25. Where history concerns mainly personalities, the drawings become either black or white according to the interests of the writer.
Isaac Asimov
#26. There is nothing frightening about an eternal dreamless sleep. Surely it is better than eternal torment in Hell and eternal boredom in Heaven.
Isaac Asimov
#27. The important prediction is not the automobile, but the parking problem; not radio, but the soap opera; not the income tax, but the expense account; not the Bomb, but the nuclear stalemate
Isaac Asimov
#28. Murray said, "Is this Heaven?"
The Voice said, "This is no place as you understand place."
Murray was embarrassed, but the next question had to be asked. "Pardon me if I sound like a jackass. Are you God?
Isaac Asimov
#29. 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.
Isaac Asimov
#30. To [the government] it didn't matter what happened to the American people as long as america in the abstract was kept strong.
Isaac Asimov
#31. And now a hundred subjective years had passed in those hundred objective hours and he could no longer clearly visualize the university at all or the life of sad frustration he had been leading there toward the end.
Isaac Asimov
#32. Rules, established with reason and justice, can easily outlive their usefulness as circumstances change, yet can remain in force through inertia. It is then not only right, but useful, to break those rules as a way of advertising the fact that they have become useless - or even actually harmful.
Isaac Asimov
#33. [A]n unpleasant nest of nasty, materialistic and aggressive people, careless of the rights of others, imperfectly democratic at home though quick to see the minor slaveries of others, and greedy without end.
Isaac Asimov
#34. 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
Isaac Asimov
#35. If there is a category of human being for whom his work ought to speak for itself, it is the writer.
Isaac Asimov
#36. When I die I won't go to heaven or hell; there will just be nothingness.
Isaac Asimov
#37. Love life seems to be that factor which requires the largest quantity of magical tinkering.
Isaac Asimov
#39. To make discoveries, you have to be curious about why the universe is the way it is.
Isaac Asimov
#40. I even got a letter from a young woman in British Columbia that began as follows: 'Today I am eighteen. I am sitting at the window, looking out at the rain, and thinking how much I love you.'
Isaac Asimov
#41. 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.
Isaac Asimov
#42. They recognize the Master, now that I have preached Truth to them. All the robots do.
Isaac Asimov
#43. And as long as it is so believed, Procurator, and as long as we of Earth are treated as pariahs, you are going to find in us the characteristics to which you object.
Isaac Asimov
#44. Do not forget that a traitor within our ranks, known to us, can do more harm to the enemy than a loyal man can do good to us.
Isaac Asimov
#45. It has been said in this courtroom that only a human being can be free. It seems to me that only someone who wishes for freedom can be free. I wish for freedom.
Isaac Asimov
#46. The most hopelessly stupid man is he who is not aware he is wise.
Isaac Asimov
#47. The history of science is full of revolutionary advances that required small insights that anyone might have had, but that, in fact, only one person did.
Isaac Asimov
#48. I grow grandiose, which is a good sign I should become prosaic.
Isaac Asimov
#50. At odd and unpredictable times, we cling in fright to the past .
Isaac Asimov
#51. 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.
Isaac Asimov
#52. Surely the relationship between inconveniences suffered and privileges granted was part of the very essentials of learning how to handle people without an explosion.
Isaac Asimov
#53. How many people is the earth able to sustain?
Isaac Asimov
#54. The day you stop learning is the day you begin decaying.
Isaac Asimov
#55. We are all victimized by the natural perversity of inanimate objects ... and the assorted human beings who perpetuate and maintain this perversity.
Isaac Asimov
#56. Don't you see? It's Galaxy-wide. It's a worship of the past. It's a deterioration - a stagnation!
Isaac Asimov
#59. The advance of genetic engineering makes it quite conceivable that we will begin to design our own evolutionary progress.
Isaac Asimov
#60. Dreams may be impossible, yet still be dreamed.
Isaac Asimov
#61. We all know we fall. Newton's discovery was that the moon falls, too-and by the same rule that we do.
Isaac Asimov
#62. The murky gray light of incipient dawn was cold not only in the poetical sense but also in a very literal way - and
Isaac Asimov
#63. Men identified themselves with the Century with which they were associated professionally. Its battles, all too often, became their own battles.
Isaac Asimov
#64. Courtiers don't take wagers against the king's skill. There is the deadly danger of winning.
Isaac Asimov
#65. A happy wall is a long-lived wall, a practical wall, a useful wall.
Isaac Asimov
#66. That's right, but it's not a mathematical proposition. It's a sociological observation
and there is always the possibility of exceptions to such observations. - Dr. Mandamus to Dr. Kelden Amadiro
Isaac Asimov
#67. When they sat down at a small table and punched in their orders,
Isaac Asimov
#68. Having reached 451 books as of now doesn't help the situation. If I were to be dying now, I would be murmuring, "Too bad! Only four hundred fifty-one." (Those would be my next-to-last words. The last ones will be: "I love you, Janet.") [They were. -Janet.]
Isaac Asimov
#69. 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.
Isaac Asimov
#70. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. [The Second Law of Robotics]
Isaac Asimov
#71. There never can be a man so lost as one who is lost in the vast and intricate corridors of his own lonely mind, where none may reach and none may save.
Isaac Asimov
#72. I believe that scientific knowledge has fractal properties, that no matter how much we learn, whatever is left, however small it may seem, is just as infinitely complex as the whole was to start with. That, I think, is the secret of the Universe.
Isaac Asimov
#73. All that had been done in the mid-twentieth century on "calculating machines" had been upset by Robertson and his positronic brain-paths. The miles of relays and photocells had given way to the spongy globe of plantinumiridium about the size of a human brain. She
Isaac Asimov
#74. The first problem of living is to minimize friction with the crowds that surround you on all sides.
Isaac Asimov
#75. 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.
Isaac Asimov
#76. Even as a youngster, though, I could not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presented danger, the solution was ignorance. To me, it always seemed that the solution had to be wisdom. You did not refuse to look at danger, rather you learned how to handle it safely.
Isaac Asimov
#77. However, I continue to try and I continue, indefatigably, to reach out. There's no way I can single-handedly save the world or, perhaps, even make a perceptible difference - but how ashamed I would be to let a day pass without making one more effort.
Isaac Asimov
#78. And he wreaked havoc among the buttered toast as he said it.
Isaac Asimov
#79. 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.
Isaac Asimov
#80. I tell you it's deadly when you start thinking your wife might be right.
Isaac Asimov
#81. Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Isaac Asimov
#82. 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.
Isaac Asimov
#83. It was a sign of decaying culture, of course, that dams had been built against the further development of ideas.
Isaac Asimov
#84. It might seem to you, Peter, that a truck driver, one step above an ape in your view, can't remember. But truck drivers can have brains, too.
Isaac Asimov
#85. The elderly man, flushed with pleasure, was recounting in voluble fashion his experiences and impressions. His wife joined in periodically, with meticulous corrections involving completely unimportant points; these being given and taken in the best of humor.
Isaac Asimov
#86. What lasts in the reader's mind is not the phrase but the effect the phrase created: laughter, tears, pain, joy. If the phrase is not affecting the reader, what's it doing there? Make it do its job or cut it without mercy or remorse.
Isaac Asimov
#87. 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.
Isaac Asimov
#88. You are never too old to learn more than you already know and to become able to do more than you already can.
Isaac Asimov
#89. The colonization of space is the only possible salvation of Earth.
Isaac Asimov
#90. ...the telemetrists began to use a computer to program the computer that designed the program for the computer that programmed the robot-controlling computer.
There was nothing but confusion.
Isaac Asimov
#91. People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence.
Isaac Asimov
#92. The downtrodden are more religious than the satisfied.
Isaac Asimov
#93. In the empty expanses of space, the wandering traders need men like myself to care for the spiritual side of a life so given over to commerce, and worldly pursuits.
Isaac Asimov
#94. If a robot can be manipulated into doing harm to a man, it means only that we must extend the powers of the positronic brain. One might say we ought to make the human better. That is impossible, so we will make the robot more foolproof.
Isaac Asimov
#95. I shall not be alive a half decade hence," said Seldon, "and yet it is of overpowering concern to me. Call it idealism. Call it an identification of myself with that mystical generalization to which we refer by the term, 'man.
Isaac Asimov
#96. It is a difficult choice sometimes whether to feel revolted at the male sex or merely to dismiss them as contemptible.
Isaac Asimov
#97. A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.
Isaac Asimov
#98. That is, he made boasts. But boasts are wind and deeds are hard.
Isaac Asimov
#99. You are a practical man, Elijah. You do not moon romantically over Earth's past, despite your healthy interest in it. Nor do you stubbornly embrace the City culture of Earth's present day. We felt that people such as yourself were the ones that could lead Earthmen to the stars once more.
Isaac Asimov
#100. There is no merit to discipline under ideal circumstances. I must have it in the face of death or it is worthless.
Isaac Asimov
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