Isaac Asimov Quotes
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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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Plowboy: You truly feel that all the major changes in history have been caused by science and technology?
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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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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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I wouldn't give an astrologer the time of day.
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At odd and unpredictable times, we cling in fright to the past.
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I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.
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'Is not all this an extraordinary concatenation of coincidence?' Pelorat said, 'If you list it like that-' 'List it any way you please,' said Trevize. 'I don’t believe in extraordinary concatenations of coincidence.'
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'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.'
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It is not only the living who are killed in war.
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Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
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All mankind, right down to those you most despise, are your neighbors.
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A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
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I consider one of the most important duties of any scientist the teaching of science to students and to the general public.
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Tritt listened placidly, clearly understanding nothing, but content to be listening; while Odeen, transmitting nothing, was as clearly content to be lecturing.
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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.
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To the rest of the Galaxy, if they are aware of us at all, Earth is but a pebble in the sky. To us it is home, and all the home we know.
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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.
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Surely there is no language more majestic than that of Shakespeare, Milton, and the King James Bible, and if I am to have one language that I know as only a native can know it, I consider myself unbelievably fortunate that it is English.
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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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The fact that the general incidence of leukemia has doubled in the last two decades may be due, partly, to the increasing use of x-rays for numerous purposes. The incidence of leukemia in doctors, who are likely to be so exposed, is twice that of the general public. In radiologists … the incidence is ten times greater.
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When an old person dies who has been a part of your life, it is part of your youth that dies.
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I believe that only scientists can understand the universe. It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong.
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I fear my ignorance.