Isaac Asimov Quotes
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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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Q. You do not consider your statement a disloyal one? A. No, sir. Scientific truth is beyond loyalty and disloyalty. Q. You are sure that your statement represents scientific truth? A. I am.
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'Such unsubtle escapism! Really, Dr. Fara, such folly smacks of genius. A lesser mind would be incapable of it.'
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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.
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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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Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
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I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.
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A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.
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Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all time low over the world.
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There is nothing so eternally adhesive as the memory of power.
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I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
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The whole business is the crudest sort of stratagem, since we have no way of foreseeing it to the end. It is a mere paying out of rope on the chance that somewhere along the length of it will be a noose.
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I know nothing of that directly; I only know what I have been told by other young ones who couldn’t have known directly either. I want to find out the truth about them and the wanting has grown until there is more of curiosity in me than fear.
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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.’ '
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Can the word ‘best’ mean anything at all, except to some particular person in some particular mood? Perhaps not - so if we allow the word to stand as an absolute, you, or you, or perhaps you, may be appalled at omissions or inclusions or, never having read me before, may even be impelled to cry out, ‘Good heavens, are those his best?’
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Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.
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'Ponyets! They sent you?' 'Pure chance,' said Ponyets, bitterly, 'or the work of my own personal malevolent demon.'
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Once you get it into your head that somebody is controlling events, you can interpret everything in that light and find no reasonable certainty anywhere.
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'It is a mistake,' he said, 'to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century.'
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I wouldn't give an astrologer the time of day.
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The spell of power never quite releases its hold.
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He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.
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It is better to go to defeat with free will than to live in a meaningless security as a cog in a machine.
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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.