Top 100 Asimov's Quotes
#1. 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
#2. I grew up reading Stephen King, Peter Straub, Clive Barker, Robert McCammon, Isaac Asimov's nonfiction books, and Roald Dahl.
Nnedi Okorafor
#3. A story in Asimov's is read by hundreds of thousands of people.
Greg Egan
#4. Analog, or Asimov's Magazine, or The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
David Brin
#5. The other one I did was 'I, Robot.' I take apart Isaac Asimov's Robots world.
Cory Doctorow
#6. Scientists derive satisfaction from figuring out the puzzle. It's about the quest, not the grail.
Isaac Asimov
#7. 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
#8. It's not so much what you have to learn if you accept weird theories, it's what you have to UNlearn.
Isaac Asimov
#9. Naturally, there's got to be a limit for I don't expect to live forever, but I do intend to hang on as long as possible.
Isaac Asimov
#10. On Earth, we have a continuous influx of young people who are willing to change because they haven't had time to grow hard set in their ways. I suppose there's some optimum. A life long enough for real accomplishment and short enough to make way for youth at a rate that's not too slow.
Isaac Asimov
#11. The first law of dietetics seems to be: if it tastes good, it's bad for you.
Isaac Asimov
#12. I don't know. How did Beethoven hear the Ninth Symphony in his head before he wrote it down? The brain's a pretty good computer, too, isn't it?
Isaac Asimov
#13. Man's greatest asset is the unsettled mind.
Isaac Asimov
#14. Naturally, since [the Sumerians] didn't know what caused the flood anymore than we do, they blamed the gods. (That's the advantage of religion. You're never short an explanation for anything.)
Isaac Asimov
#15. It's humbling to think that all animals, including human beings, are parasites of the plant world.
Isaac Asimov
#16. You can't maintain discipline that way." Mallow said icily, "I can. There's no merit in discipline under ideal circumstances. I'll have it in the face of death, or it's useless.
Isaac Asimov
#17. 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.
Isaac Asimov
#18. People say 'It's as plain as the noise on your face.' But how much of the nose on your face can you see, unless someone hold a mirror up to you?
Isaac Asimov
#19. Today's science fiction is tomorrow's science fact.
Isaac Asimov
#20. God, how that stings! I've spent a lifetime loving science fiction and now I find that you must expect nothing of something that's just science fiction.
Isaac Asimov
#21. It's hard not to like Asimov; he's a really likable guy.
Cory Doctorow
#22. In memory yet green, in joy still felt,
The scenes of life rise sharply into view.
We triumph; Life's disasters are undealt,
And while all else is old, the world is new.
Isaac Asimov
#23. Is everything normal now?"
"Well he hasn't got religious mania, and he isn't running around in a circle
spouting Gilbert and Sullivan, so I suppose he's normal." (45)
Isaac Asimov
#24. He always pictured himself a libertarian, which to my way of thinking means "I want the liberty to grow rich and you can have the liberty to starve". It's easy to believe that no one should depend on society for help when you yourself happen not to need such help.
Isaac Asimov
#25. Saying something is 'too bad' is easy. You say you disapprove, which makes you a nice person, and then you can go about your business and not be interested anymore. It's a lot worse than 'too bad.' It's against everything decent and natural.
Isaac Asimov
#26. There was no doubt about it: the City was the culmination of man's mastery over the environment. Not space travel, not the fifty colonized worlds that were now so haughtily independent, but the City.
Isaac Asimov
#27. 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.
Isaac Asimov
#28. It's your fiction that interests me. Your studies of the interplay of human motives and emotion.
Isaac Asimov
#29. When one's home has a really excellent computer capable of reaching other computers anywhere in the Galaxy, one scarcely needs to budge, you know.
Isaac Asimov
#30. People live and die by nonsense. It's not what is so much as what people think is.
Isaac Asimov
#31. The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...
Isaac Asimov
#32. Science is a mechanism, a way of trying to improve your knowledge of nature. It's a system for testing your thoughts against the universe, and seeing whether they match.
Isaac Asimov
#33. I'll take that challenge. It's a dead hand against a living will.
Isaac Asimov
#34. All of a sudden, space isn't friendly. All of a sudden, it's a place where people can die ... Many more people are going to die. But we can't explore space if the requirement is that there be no casualties; we can't do anything if the requirement is that there be no casualties.
Isaac Asimov
#35. Science is not about what's true. It's about what people with originally diverse viewpoints can be forced to believe by way of public evidence.
Lee Smolin
#36. One of Walt Whitman's best-known poems is this one: When I heard the learn'd astronomer, ... The trouble is, Whitman is talking through his hat, but the poor soul didn't know any better
Isaac Asimov
#37. There's something about a pious man such as he. He will cheerfully cut your throat if it suits him, but he will hesitate to endanger the welfare of your immaterial and problematical soul.
Isaac Asimov
#38. Every man's position on Earth is restricted to the distance he can walk.'
The Last Trump
Isaac Asimov
#39. 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.
Isaac Asimov
#40. There's probably no one so easily bribed, but he lacks even the fundamental honesty of honorable corruption. He doesn't stay bribed; not for any sum.
Isaac Asimov
#41. He's but a windlet that blows the dust about my ankles. There is another that I flee, and he is a storm that sweeps the worlds aside and throws them plunging at each other.
Isaac Asimov
#42. Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.
Isaac Asimov
#44. Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.
Isaac Asimov
#45. You can't assert an answer just because it's not something else.
Isaac Asimov
#46. Rod from his pocket. The Earthman croaked, "That's a psychic probe." His words were slurred,
Isaac Asimov
#47. 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.
Isaac Asimov
#48. John 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.
Isaac Asimov
#49. The great secret of the successful fool is that he's no fool at all
Isaac Asimov
#50. Anything you make forbidden gains sexual attractiveness. Would you be particularly interested in women's breasts if you lived in a society in which they were displayed at all times?
Isaac Asimov
#51. Somewhere on the world was the Emperor's palace, set amid one hundred square miles of natural soil, rainbowed with flowers.
Isaac Asimov
#52. Clarke's First Law - Corollary: 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.
Isaac Asimov
#53. Don't you see? It's Galaxy-wide. It's a worship of the past. It's a deterioration - a stagnation!
Isaac Asimov
#54. It's a poor atom blaster that won't point both ways.
Isaac Asimov
#55. Author's Note: This story starts with section 6. This is not a mistake. I have my own subtle reasoning. So, just read, and enjoy.
Isaac Asimov
#56. He's a pygmy with only one talent, the ability to convince others he's a giant." Lamont
Isaac Asimov
#57. 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
#58. 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
#59. 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
#60. I tell you it's deadly when you start thinking your wife might be right.
Isaac Asimov
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. Courtiers don't take wagers against the king's skill. There is the deadly danger of winning.
Isaac Asimov
#64. We all know we fall. Newton's discovery was that the moon falls, too-and by the same rule that we do.
Isaac Asimov
#65. 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
#66. 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
#67. 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
#68. 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
#69. 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
#70. 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
#71. 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
#72. Where history concerns mainly personalities, the drawings become either black or white according to the interests of the writer.
Isaac Asimov
#73. To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.
Isaac Asimov
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. 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
#77. 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.
Isaac Asimov
#78. Scientist are human. Unraveling the knots of Nature's mysteries is a reward in itself; but even so, scientists like to hear the applause of the audience
Isaac Asimov
#79. I like norby though time and space because he's not all smart and the storys verry interesting
Janet Asimov
#80. There is no more desire to live past one's time than to die before it.
Isaac Asimov
#81. I can't bear to hear a human being spoken of with contempt just because of his group identification ... It's these respectable people here who create those hooligans out there.
Isaac Asimov
#82. Things do change. The only question is that since things are deteriorating so quickly, will society and man's habits change quickly enough?
Isaac Asimov
#84. Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ...
Isaac Asimov
#85. I don't think I've ever held a racket in my hand ... There's got to be somebody in the US who isn't trying to play tennis and stinking up the court.
Isaac Asimov
#86. It's just science fiction so it's allowed to be silly, and childish, and stupid. It's just science fiction, so it doesn't have to make sense. It's just science fiction, so you must ask nothing more of it than loud noises and flashing lights.
Isaac Asimov
#87. That's the harm of Close Encounters: that it convinces tens of millions that that's what just science fiction is.
Isaac Asimov
#88. I don't like anything that's got to be. I want to know why.
Isaac Asimov
#89. I suppose there's no way of putting the mushroom cloud back into that nice, shiny uranium sphere.
Isaac Asimov
#90. Genetic engineering is not really something new. Human beings have been fiddling with genes for as long as ten thousand years. That's how long they have been growing plants and herding animals.
Isaac Asimov
#91. 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
#92. Enough, my very noble husband. You had another of your vacillating consultations with your councilors. Fine advisors." With infinite scorn, "A herd of palsied purblind idiots hugging their sterile profits close to their sunken chests in the face of my father's displeasure.
Isaac Asimov
#93. When life is so harsh that a man loses all hope in himself, then he raises his eyes to a shining rock, worshipping it, just to find hope again, rather than looking to his own acts for hope and salvation. Yes, atheism IS a redemptive belief. It is theism that denies man's own redemptive nature.
Isaac Asimov
#94. She's qualified all right. She understands robots like a sister - comes from hating human beings so much, I think.
Isaac Asimov
#95. Jessie rummaged through her purse for the necessary equipment. If there were one thing, Baley had once said solemnly, that had resisted mechanical improvement since medieval times, it was a woman's purse.
Isaac Asimov
#96. Feminine intuition? Is that what you wanted the robot for? You men. Faced with a woman reaching a correct conclusion and unable to accept the fact that she is your equal or superior in intelligence, you invent something called feminine intuition.
Isaac Asimov
#97. From the radiating point of Siwenna, the forces of the Empire reached out cautiously into the black unknown of the Periphery. Giant ships passed the vast distances that separated the vagrant stars at the Galaxy's rim, and felt their way around the outermost edge of Foundation influence.
Isaac Asimov
#98. Society is much more easily soothed than one's own conscience.
Isaac Asimov
#99. 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.
Isaac Asimov
#100. The Solarians have given up something mankind has had for a million years; something worth more than atomic power, cities, agriculture, tools, fire, everything; because it's something that made everything possible ( ... ) The tribe, sir. Cooperation between individuals.
Isaac Asimov
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