Isaac Asimov Quotes
-
The easiest way to solve a problem is to deny it exists.
-
Courtiers don’t take wagers against the king’s skill. There is the deadly danger of winning.
-
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.
-
There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.
-
But suppose we were to teach creationism. What would be the content of the teaching? Merely that a creator formed the universe and all species of life ready-made? Nothing more? No details?
-
I don’t like anything that’s got to be. I want to know why.
-
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.
-
Well, then, arrest him. You can accuse him of something or other afterward.
-
When you write a short story ... you had better know the ending first. The end of a story is only the end to the reader. To the writer, it's the beginning. If you don't know exactly where you're going every minute you're writing, you'll never get there - or anywhere.
-
He is a dreamer of ancient times, or rather, of the myths of what ancient times used to be. Such men are harmless in themselves, but their queer lack of realism makes them fools for others.
-
I suppose he’s entitled to his opinion, but I don’t suppose it very hard.
-
We abandoned the appearance of power to preserve the essence of it.
-
'Reason', p. 63
-
Societies create their own history and tend to wipe out lowly beginnings, either by forgetting them or inventing totally fictitious heroic rescues.
-
Economics is on the side of humanity now.
-
If an interaction is too weak to be detectable or to exert influence in any way, then by any operational definition, it doesn’t exist.
-
In my fiction I am careful to make everything probable and to tie up all loose ends. Real life is not hampered by such considerations.
-
Just you think first, and don’t bother to speak afterward, either.
-
'Fifty years,' I hackneyed, 'is a long time.' 'Not when you’re looking back at them,' she said. 'You wonder how they vanished so quickly.'
-
A planet full of people meant nothing against the dictates of economic necessity!
-
Hypocrisy is a universal phenomenon. It ends with death, but not before.
-
He believes in that mummery a good deal less than I do, and I don’t believe in it at all.
-
Outside intelligences, exploring the Solar System with true impartiality, would be quite likely to enter the Sun in their records thus: Star X, spectral class G0, 4 planets plus debris.
-
I was once being interviewed by Barbara Walters...In between two of the segments she asked me...'But what would you do if the doctor gave you only six months to live?' I said, 'Type faster.' This was widely quoted, but the 'six months' was changed to 'six minutes,' which bothered me. It's 'six months.'