Asimov Quotes

#1. 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

#2. 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

#3. 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

#4. To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.

Isaac Asimov

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

Isaac Asimov

#6. 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

#7. 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

#8. 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

#9. 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

#10. 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

#11. 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

#12. 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

#13. [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

#14. 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

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

Isaac Asimov

#16. When I die I won't go to heaven or hell; there will just be nothingness.

Isaac Asimov

#17. Love life seems to be that factor which requires the largest quantity of magical tinkering.

Isaac Asimov

#18. Weak emperors mean strong viceroys.

Isaac Asimov

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

Isaac Asimov

#20. 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

#21. 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

#22. The other one I did was 'I, Robot.' I take apart Isaac Asimov's Robots world.

Cory Doctorow

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

Isaac Asimov

#24. 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

#25. 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

#26. 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

#27. The most hopelessly stupid man is he who is not aware he is wise.

Isaac Asimov

#28. 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

#29. I grow grandiose, which is a good sign I should become prosaic.

Isaac Asimov

#30. The mistiness of distance hides the truth

Isaac Asimov

#31. At odd and unpredictable times, we cling in fright to the past .

Isaac Asimov

#32. 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

#33. 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

#34. How many people is the earth able to sustain?

Isaac Asimov

#35. The day you stop learning is the day you begin decaying.

Isaac Asimov

#36. We are all victimized by the natural perversity of inanimate objects ... and the assorted human beings who perpetuate and maintain this perversity.

Isaac Asimov

#37. Don't you see? It's Galaxy-wide. It's a worship of the past. It's a deterioration - a stagnation!

Isaac Asimov

#38. Consider the question suitably modified.

Isaac Asimov

#39. Finished products are for decadent minds.

Isaac Asimov

#40. The advance of genetic engineering makes it quite conceivable that we will begin to design our own evolutionary progress.

Isaac Asimov

#41. Dreams may be impossible, yet still be dreamed.

Isaac Asimov

#42. We all know we fall. Newton's discovery was that the moon falls, too-and by the same rule that we do.

Isaac Asimov

#43. 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

#44. Men identified themselves with the Century with which they were associated professionally. Its battles, all too often, became their own battles.

Isaac Asimov

#45. Courtiers don't take wagers against the king's skill. There is the deadly danger of winning.

Isaac Asimov

#46. A happy wall is a long-lived wall, a practical wall, a useful wall.

Isaac Asimov

#47. 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

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

Isaac Asimov

#49. 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

#50. 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

#51. 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

#52. 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

#53. 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

#54. 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

#55. The first problem of living is to minimize friction with the crowds that surround you on all sides.

Isaac Asimov

#56. 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

#57. 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

#58. 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

#59. And he wreaked havoc among the buttered toast as he said it.

Isaac Asimov

#60. 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

#61. I tell you it's deadly when you start thinking your wife might be right.

Isaac Asimov

#62. Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.

Isaac Asimov

#63. 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

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

Isaac Asimov

#65. 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

#66. 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

#67. 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

#68. 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

#69. 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

#70. The colonization of space is the only possible salvation of Earth.

Isaac Asimov

#71. ...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

#72. People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence.

Isaac Asimov

#73. The downtrodden are more religious than the satisfied.

Isaac Asimov

#74. 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

#75. 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

#76. 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

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

Isaac Asimov

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

Isaac Asimov

#79. That is, he made boasts. But boasts are wind and deeds are hard.

Isaac Asimov

#80. 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

#81. There is no merit to discipline under ideal circumstances. I must have it in the face of death or it is worthless.

Isaac Asimov

#82. What is really amazing, and frustrating, is mankind's habit of refusing to see the obvious and inevitable until it is there, and then muttering about unforeseen catastrophes.

Isaac Asimov

#83. Life originated in the sea, and about eighty percent of it is still there.

Isaac Asimov

#84. We must not be taken in by the myth of youth, the unending propaganda to the effect that young men are younger than old men; that they are better looking; that they are slimmer, stronger and more athletic; that they can hold a girl in more romantic fashion and speak more sweetly.

Isaac Asimov

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

Isaac Asimov

#86. 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.

Isaac Asimov

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

Isaac Asimov

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

Isaac Asimov

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

Isaac Asimov

#90. The age of the pulp magazine was the last in which youngsters, to get their primitive material, were forced to be literate.

Isaac Asimov

#91. The Foundation has secrets. They have books, old books - so old that the language they are in is only known to a few of the top men. But the secrets are shrouded in ritual and religion, and may use them.

Isaac Asimov

#92. The facts, gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching.

Isaac Asimov

#93. The solar system consists of Jupiter, plus debris.

Isaac Asimov

#94. Can't you try>? However useless the effort may seem to you to be, have you anything better to do with your life? Have you some worthier goal? Have you a purpose that will justify you in your own eyes to some greater extent?

Isaac Asimov

#95. He's a pygmy with only one talent, the ability to convince others he's a giant." Lamont

Isaac Asimov

#96. The action of social revolution and the reaction of guarding against such revolution or combating it once it has begun are the causes of a great deal of the human misery with which history is permeated.

Isaac Asimov

#97. The final end of Eternity, and the beginning of Infinity

Isaac Asimov

#98. History was interesting to the extent that it was catastrophic and, while that might make absorbing viewing, it made horrible living.

Isaac Asimov

#99. A great many things are possible. And to himself he added: But not practical.

Isaac Asimov

#100. Married life had taught him the futility of arguing with a female in a dark-brown mood.

Isaac Asimov