Isaac Asimov Quotes
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It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.
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I’ve lived most of my life already and I suppose I can argue myself into believing that I have no great cause to love humanity. However, only a few people have hurt me, and if I hurt everyone in return that is unconscionable usury.
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To insult someone we call him 'bestial. For deliberate cruelty and nature, 'human' might be the greater insult.
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I don't expect to live forever, but I do intend to hang on as long as possible.
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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.
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It is because you yourself fear the propaganda created, after all, only by the stupidity of your own bigots.
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There are no happy endings in history, only crisis points that pass.
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To Mankind And the hope that the war against folly may someday be won, after all.
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Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.
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The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
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If there is a misuse of power, it is on her part. My crime is that I have never labored to make myself popular - I admit that much - and I have paid too little attention to fools who are old enough to be senile but young enough to have power.
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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.
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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.
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The house was somehow very lonely at night and Dr. Darell found that the fate of the Galaxy made remarkably little difference while his daughter’s mad little life was in danger.
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A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
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It is the invariable lesson to humanity that distance in time, and in space as well, lends focus. It is not recorded, incidentally, that the lesson has ever been permanently learned.
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There is no way of being almost funny or mildly funny or fairly funny or tolerably funny. You are either funny or not funny and there is nothing in between. And usually it is the writer who thinks he is funny and the reader who thinks he isn't.
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Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.
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It is well-known that the friend of a conqueror is but the last victim.
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The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
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Pelorat sighed. 'I will never understand people.' 'There’s nothing to it. All you have to do is take a close look at yourself and you will understand everyone else. We’re in no way different ourselves... You show me someone who can’t understand people and I’ll show you someone who has built up a false image of himself.'
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There is nothing so eternally adhesive as the memory of power.
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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.
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'That insufferable, dull-witted donkey! That-' Hardin broke in: 'Not at all. He’s merely the product of his environment. He doesn’t understand much except that ‘I got a gun and you ain’t.’ '