Isaac Asimov quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Isaac Asimov on Wise Famous Quotes.

Fifty before I come of age," he had exulted. "Who'll take the wager?" But

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

Modern science fiction is the only form of literature that consistently considers the nature of the changes that face us.

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

I never considered myself a patriot. I like to think I recognize only humanity as my nation.

It's the writing that teaches you.

Night will always be a time of fear and insecurity, and the heart will sink with the sun.

Ben Estes knew he was going to die and it didn't make him feel any better to know that that was the chance he had lived with all these years.

I don't believe in extraordinary concatenations of coincidence.

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

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

Writing is my only interest. Even speaking is an interruption.

There is no right to deny freedom to any object with a mind advanced enough to grasp the concept and desire the state.

Any book worth banning is a book worth reading.

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

The Scientist - with capital letters and no smile.

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.

When I feel difficulty coming on, I switch to another book I'm writing. When I get back to the problem, my unconscious has solved it.

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

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

It is well-known that the friend of a conqueror is but the last victim.

Today's science fiction is tomorrow's science fact.

There is nothing straight about you; no motive that hasn't another behind it; no statement that hasn't three meanings.

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

Boasts are wind and deeds are hard.

You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason
if you pick the proper postulates.

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

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

It has always been my ambition to die in harness with my head face down on a keyboard and my nose caught between two of the keys.

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

In fact, it was part of the Tyrannian military tradition that a little discomfort on the part of the soldier was good for discipline.

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

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

The troubles of modern life come from being divorced from nature.

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 ...

There seems to be a feeling that anything that is natural is good. Strychnine is natural.

You are the only one responsible for your own wants.

The whole world might know you and acclaim you, but someone in the past, forever unreachable, forever unknowing, spoils it all.

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

The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.

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

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

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

I'll take that challenge. It's a dead hand against a living will.

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

Oh, for a pin that would puncture pretension!

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

The final end of Eternity, and the beginning of Infinity

I don't like anything that's got to be. I want to know why.

Education is something you can not finish.

Never let your sense of morals keep you from doing what is right.

There is no one so insufferable as a person who gives no other excuse for a peculiar action than saying he had been directed to it in a dream.

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

[Social] science fiction is that branch of literature which is concerned with the impact of scientific advance on human beings.

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.

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.

Working ten hour days allows you to fall behind twice as fast as you could working five hour days.

There are no happy endings in history, only crisis points that pass.

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

To Mankind
And the hope that the war against folly
may someday be won after all.

Every religion seems like a fantasy to outsiders, but as holy truth to those of the faith.

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

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

It is always useful, you see, to subject the past life of reform politicians to rather inquisitive research.

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

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.

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

(The word "robot" is from a Czech word meaning "compulsory labor.")

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.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

The spell of power never quite releases its hold.

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

It is remarkable, Hardin, how the religion of science has grabbed hold.

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

An incompetent traitor is no danger. It is rather the capable men who must be watched

It takes more than capital to swing business. You've got to have the A. I. D. degree to get by - Advertising, Initiative, and Dynamics.

There is nothing frightening about an eternal dreamless sleep. Surely it is better than eternal torment in Hell and eternal boredom in Heaven.

Where any answer is possible, all answers are meaningless.

Scientific apparatus offers a window to knowledge, but as they grow more elaborate, scientists spend ever more time washing the windows.

It was childish to feel disappointed, but childishness comes almost as naturally to a man as to a child.

Having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be.

In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.

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

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

Space, man, have you no respect for science?

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

I'm being accused of modesty, a horrible and thoroughly unnatural crime.

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.

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.

Life is a journey, but don't worry, you'll find a parking spot at the end.

There is a longing for a supposedly simple and virtuous past that is almost universal among the people of a complex and vicious society.

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

You lack the capacity to decipher this particular puzzle.

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

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

Happiness is doing it rotten your own way.

The word 'tradition' covered it all, as it covered so many things, some useful, some foolish.

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

The law of conservation of energy tells us we can't get something for nothing, but we refuse to believe it.

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