Not Asimov Quotes

#1. Presumably, such is the folly of human beings, the prospects of intellectual suicide might not stop them from indulging their hatred,

Isaac Asimov

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

Isaac Asimov

#3. I'm forty-nine, not fifteen, and I've made my peace with myself. Had I been handsome and stupid when I was fifteen, or twenty-one, as, at that time in life, I wished I had been, I would undoubtedly now no longer be handsome--but I'd still be stupid. So, in the long run, I've won out.

Isaac Asimov

#4. 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

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

Isaac Asimov

#6. 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.

Isaac Asimov

#7. It's not so much what you have to learn if you accept weird theories, it's what you have to UNlearn.

Isaac Asimov

#8. Scientists derive satisfaction from figuring out the puzzle. It's about the quest, not the grail.

Isaac Asimov

#9. And, above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you very much at your own reckoning.

Anthony Trollope

#10. Unfortunately, in many cases, people who write science fiction violate the laws of nature, not because they want to make a point, but because they don't know what the laws of nature are.

Isaac Asimov

#11. I wish that I could say I was optimistic about the human race. I love us all, but we are so stupid and shortsighted that I wonder if we can lift our eyes to the world about us long enough not to commit suicide.

Isaac Asimov

#12. A knotty puzzle may hold a scientist up for a century, when it may be that a colleague has the solution already and is not even aware of the puzzle that it might solve.

Isaac Asimov

#13. It's hard not to like Asimov; he's a really likable guy.

Cory Doctorow

#14. Humanity is cutting down its forests, apparently oblivious to the fact that we may not be able to live without them.

Isaac Asimov

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

Isaac Asimov

#16. Above all, never think you're not good enough. Never think that. In life people will take you at your own reckoning.

Isaac Asimov

#17. 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

#18. The human mind resents control. The ordinary human hypnotist cannot hypnotize a person against his will for that reason. I can, because I'm not a hypnotist, and, believe me, Pritcher, the resentment that you cannot show and do not even know you possess is something I wouldn't want to face." Pritcher

Isaac Asimov

#19. 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

#20. To any who know the star field well from one certain reference point, stars are as individual as people. Jump ten parsecs, however, and not even your own sun is recognizable.

Isaac Asimov

#21. Gratitude is best and most effective when it does not evaporate itself in empty phrases.

Isaac Asimov

#22. 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

#23. Were I to use the wits the good Spirits gave me," he said, "then I would say this lady can not exist - for what sane man would hold a dream to be reality. Yet rather would I not be sane and lend belief to charmed, enchanted eyes.

Isaac Asimov

#24. Why, he wondered, did so many people spend their lives not trying to find answers to questions - not even thinking of questions to begin with? Was there anything more exciting in life than seeking answers?

Isaac Asimov

#25. Intelligence is an accident of evolution, and not necessarily an advantage.

Isaac Asimov

#26. In theory, there is nothing the computer can do that the human mind can not do. The computer merely takes a finite amount of data and performs a finite number of operations upon them. The human mind can duplicate the process

Isaac Asimov

#27. Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil-but there is no way around them.

Isaac Asimov

#28. 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

#29. My death, Daniel, is not important. No individual death among human beings is important. Someone who dies leaves his work behind and that does not entirely die. It never entirely dies as long as humanity exists.

Isaac Asimov

#30. Victories over ingrained patterns of thought are not won in a day or a year.

Isaac Asimov

#31. People live and die by nonsense. It's not what is so much as what people think is.

Isaac Asimov

#32. There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.

Isaac Asimov

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

Isaac Asimov

#34. 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

#35. Maybe happiness is this: not feeling like you should be elsewhere, doing something else, being someone else.

Isaac Asimov

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

Isaac Asimov

#37. Cleon II was Lord of the Universe. Cleon II also suffered from a painful and undiagnosed ailment. By the queer twists of human affairs, the two statements are not mutually exclusive, nor even particularly incongruous.

Isaac Asimov

#38. Often, one compensates by playing an instrument, or going hiking, or joining some club. In other words, one creates a new type of society, when not working, in which one can feel more at home.

Isaac Asimov

#39. The machines do not solve problems with greater insight than men do, only faster. Only faster!

Isaac Asimov

#40. I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

Isaac Asimov

#41. 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.

Isaac Asimov

#42. Galaxy! When can a man know he is not a puppet? How can a man know he is not a puppet?

Isaac Asimov

#43. I'm not a speed reader. I'm a speed understander.

Isaac Asimov

#44. 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

#45. it suddenly seems to me that the destruction of what should not be, that is, the destruction of what you people call evil, is less just and desirable than the conversion of this evil into what you call good.

Isaac Asimov

#46. 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.

Isaac Asimov

#47. For a wise man, I have been told, once said, 'Gratitude is best and most effective when it does not evaporate in empty phrases.' But alas, my lady, I am but a mass of empty phrases, it would seem.

Isaac Asimov

#48. Kill us in the clear light on the Moon, where the sky is black and soft, where the stars shine brightly, where the cleanliness and purity of vacuum make all things sharp.

- Not in this low-clinging, fuzzy blue.

Isaac Asimov

#49. If we only obey those rules that we think are just and reasonable, then no rule will stand, for there is no rule that some will not think is unjust and unreasonable.

Isaac Asimov

#50. To test a perfect theory with imperfect instruments did not impress the Greek philosophers as a valid way to gain knowledge.

Isaac Asimov

#51. 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

#52. 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.

Isaac Asimov

#53. Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete

Isaac Asimov

#54. It will all stop someday, but not for billions of years. Many billions. Even the stars run down, you know. Entropy must increase.

Isaac Asimov

#55. What was the first thing a man must do before he can be a man? He must be born. He must leave the womb; and once left, it could not be re-entered.

Isaac Asimov

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

Isaac Asimov

#57. 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.

Isaac Asimov

#58. 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

#59. Any technological advance can be dangerous. Fire was dangerous from the start, and so (even more so) was speech - and both are still dangerous to this day - but human beings would not be human without them.

Isaac Asimov

#60. There is not a discovery in science, however revolutionary, however sparkling with insight, that does not arise out of what went before.

Isaac Asimov

#61. There are so many benefits to be derived from space exploration and exploitation; why not take what seems to me the only chance of escaping what is otherwise the sure destruction of all that humanity has struggled to achieve for 50,000 years?

Isaac Asimov

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

Isaac Asimov

#63. 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

#64. What do you require to exchange your ideas for mine?" "You think my convictions are for sale?" "Why not?" came the cold response. "Isn't that your business, buying and selling?" "Only at a profit," said Mallow,

Isaac Asimov

#65. 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

#66. 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

#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. 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

#69. 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

#70. 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

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

Isaac Asimov

#72. 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

#73. 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

#74. 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

#75. 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

#76. 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

#77. Why, they are so sure of themselves that they do not even hurry. They move slowly, phlegmatically; they speak of necessary centuries. They swallow worlds at leisure; creep through systems with dawdling complacence.

Isaac Asimov

#78. I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.

Isaac Asimov

#79. I like norby though time and space because he's not all smart and the storys verry interesting

Janet Asimov

#80. Mr Baley", said Quemot, "you can't treat human emotions as though they were built about a positronic brain".
"I'm not saying you can. Robotics is a deductive science and sociology an inductive one. But mathematics can be made to apply in either case.

Isaac Asimov

#81. But he no longer feared the fear! It was not something to run from, that fear, but something to fight.

Isaac Asimov

#82. Since I do not believe in so many things, it is not difficult for me to disbelieve in the Fall as well, so that I am entirely convinced I will be telling the truth to the people.

Isaac Asimov

#83. 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

#84. A myth or legend is simply not made up out of a vacuum. Nothing is
or can be. Somehow there is a kernel of truth behind it, however distorted that might be.

Isaac Asimov

#85. Fifty years," I hackneyed, "is a long time."
"Not when you're looking back at them," she said. "You wonder how they vanished so quickly.

Isaac Asimov

#86. It is not important what can or cannot be done. What is important is what people will or will not believe can be done.

Isaac Asimov

#87. No one is so modest as not to believe himself a competent amateur sleuth ...

Isaac Asimov

#88. Galaxy, he hated them! He stopped himself, drew a firm breath...There was no use thinking hate...He had learned to bear in silence. He ought not forget what he had learned now. Of all times, not now.

Isaac Asimov

#89. 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

#90. 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

#91. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers.

Isaac Asimov

#92. If we look forward to a future in which mankind behaves rationally and avoids self-destruction, we can visualize a world that will be more complicated than the one we know today, but a world that will run better and, most of all, a world in which the individual will count for more, not less.

Isaac Asimov

#93. 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

#94. Actually, they where the Simple-Lifers, hungering after a life, which to those who lived it had probably appeared not so Simple, and who had not been, therefore, Simple-Lifers themselves.

Isaac Asimov

#95. Education is something you can not finish.

Isaac Asimov

#96. 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.

Isaac Asimov

#97. The sparkling wines from Ridgeview Estate [ ... ] are superb and will forever put to rest the notion that England is not capable of making good wine.

Eric Asimov

#98. But emotion had come upon him after all. Not for fifty billion people. What in Time did he care for fifty billion people? There was just one. One person.

Isaac Asimov

#99. It worked out neatly, yet it had all changed for him, and what was broken could not be made whole again.

Isaac Asimov

#100. 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.

Isaac Asimov