Isaac Asimov Quotes

I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

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

To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.

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.

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

Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.

People think of education as something they can finish.

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?"

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

Isn't it sad that you can tell people that the ozone layer is being depleted, the forests are being cut down, the deserts are advancing steadily, that the greenhouse effect will raise the sea level 200 feet, that overpopulation is choking us, that pollution is killing us, that nuclear war may destroy us - and they yawn and settle back for a comfortable nap. But tell them that the Martians are landing, and they scream and run.

It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.

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

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.

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

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know-and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know-even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction-than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today - but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.

The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing.

I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. 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. This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our every man must take on a science fictional way of thinking.

Now any dogma, based primarily on faith and emotionalism, is a dangerous weapon to use on others, since it is almost impossible to guarantee that the weapon will never be turned on the user.

What I will be remembered for are the Foundation Trilogy and the Three Laws of Robotics. What I want to be remembered for is no one book, or no dozen books. Any single thing I have written can be paralleled or even surpassed by something someone else has done. However, my total corpus for quantity, quality and variety can be duplicated by no one else. That is what I want to be remembered for.

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

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 at your own reckoning.

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

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

There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'

Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.

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.

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

A fire-eater must eat fire even if he has to kindle it himself.

To insult someone we call him 'bestial. For deliberate cruelty and nature, 'human' might be the greater insult.

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

From my close observation of writers... they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.

What would I do if I knew I only had six months to live? Type faster.

Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put on an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up. Well, maybe once..

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.

An atom-blaster is a good weapon, but it can point both ways.

Korell is that frequent phenomenon in history : the republic whose ruler has every attribute of the absolute monarch but the name. It therefore enjoyed the usual despotism unrestrained even by those two moderating influences in the legitimate monarchies: regal "honor" and court etiquette.

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

When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.

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

If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live, I'd type a little faster.

University President: Why is it that you physicists always require so much expensive equipment? Now the Department of Mathematics requires nothing but money for paper, pencils, and erasers . . . and the Department of Philosophy is better still. It doesn't even ask for erasers.