Asimov Quotes & Sayings

Thinking is the activity I love best, and writing to me is simply thinking through my fingers. I can write up to 18 hours a day. Typing 90 words a minute, I've done better than 50 pages a day. Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up-well, maybe once. — Isaac Asimov

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. Once it was well known that cigarettes increased the incidence of lung cancer, the obvious remedy was to stop smoking, but the desired remedy was a cigarette that did not cause cancer. When it became clear that the internal-combustion engine was polluting the atmosphere dangerously, the obvious remedy was to abandon such engines, and the desired remedy was to develop non-polluting engines. — Isaac Asimov

And he paused, aware at last of the gathering weight of the silence. Fourteen images stared at him, without any of them offering a word in response.
Bakst said sharply, "You have talked of freedom. You have it!"
Then, uncertainly, he said, "Isn't that what you want? — Isaac Asimov

The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of physics, and if the probabilities of error are greater, it is only because history does not deal with as many humans as physics does atoms, so that individual variations count for more. — Isaac Asimov

Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket. — Isaac Asimov

All you have to do is take a close look at yourself and you will understand everyone else. — Isaac Asimov

I often use detective elements in my books. I love detective novels. But I also think science fiction and detective stories are very close and friendly genres, which shows in the books by Isaac Asimov, John Brunner, and Glen Cook. However, whilst even a tiny drop of science fiction may harm a detective story, a little detective element benefits science fiction. Such a strange puzzle. — Sergei Lukyanenko

He never created a finish product. Finished products are for decadent minds. His was an evolving mechanism and the Second Foundation was the instrument of that evolution. — Isaac Asimov

I am honorary President of the American Humanist Society, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that utterly functionless capacity. We Humanists behave as well as we can, without any rewards or punishments in an Afterlife. — Kurt Vonnegut

Finge went on. There are some things, however, they must not know. Prime among them, of course, is the manner in which we alter Reality when necessary. The insecurity such knowledge would arouse would be most harmful. It is always necessary to breed out of Reality any factors that might lead to such knowledge and we have never been troubled with it. — Isaac Asimov

We would grow tired of it, Grandpa, if it were beautiful all the time. A little change from night to night is good for us.'

'For you, because you're young, Wanda. You have many, many evenings ahead of you. I don't. I want more good ones. — Isaac Asimov

No one can possibly have lived through the Great Depression without being scarred by it. No amount of experience since the depression can convince someone who has lived through it that the world is safe economically. — Isaac Asimov

A knotty puzzle may hold a scientist up for a century, when it may be that a colleague has the solution already and is not even aware of the puzzle that it might solve. — Isaac Asimov

Feminine intuition? Is that what you wanted the robot for? You men. Faced with a woman reaching a correct conclusion and unable to accept the fact that she is your equal or superior in intelligence, you invent something called feminine intuition. — Isaac Asimov

Of course there are worlds. Millions of them! Every star you see has worlds, and most of those you don't see. — Isaac Asimov

I've written five books, a book every three years. I'm fairly lazy and it doesn't take that much ... people who are not lazy are Isaac Asimov ... — Ethan Canin

Consider the question suitably modified. — Isaac Asimov

No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances. — Isaac Asimov

Arthur Clarke says that I am first in science and second in science fiction in accordance with an agreement we have made. I say he is first in science fiction and second in science. — Isaac Asimov

Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast. — Isaac Asimov

I don't subscribe to the thesis, 'Let the buyer beware,' I prefer the disregarded one that goes, 'Let the seller be honest.' — Isaac Asimov

Postulates are based on assumption and adhered to by faith. Nothing in the Universe can shake them. — Isaac Asimov

Does everyone just believe what he wants to?"
"As long as possible. Sometimes longer."
"What about you?"
"You mean, am I human? Certainly. I don't believe I'm really old. I believe I'm quite attractive. I believe you seek out my company because you think I'm charming - even when you insist on turning the conversation to physics. — Isaac Asimov

Before another century is done it will be hard for people to imagine a time when humanity was confined to one world, and it will seem to them incredible that there was ever anybody who doubted the value of space and wanted to turn his or her back on the Universe. — Isaac Asimov

Life is glorious when it is happy; days are carefree when they are happy; the interplay of thought and imagination is far superior to that of muscle and sinew. — Isaac Asimov

In themselves, harmless. As a group, incredibly dangerous. — Isaac Asimov

You wait for the war to happen like vultures. If you want to help, prevent the war. Don't save the remnants. Save them all. — Isaac Asimov

Yet he had expended much of an inquisitive nature upon random reading. By the sheer force of indiscriminate voracity, he had gleaned a smattering of practically everything, and by means of a trick memory had managed to keep it all straight. — Isaac Asimov

Riose laughed suddenly. He foresaw that? Then he foresaw wrong, my good scientist. I suppose you call yourself that. Why, the Empire is more powerful now than it has been in a millennium. Your old eyes are blinded by the cold bleakness of the border. Come to the inner worlds some day; come to the warmth and the wealth of the center. — Isaac Asimov

Only a lie that wasn't ashamed of itself could possibly succeed — Isaac Asimov

All the suffering that humanity ever knew can be traced to the one fact that no man in the history of the Galaxy, until Hari Seldon, and very few men thereafter, could really understand one another. Every human being lived behind an impenetrable wall of choking mist within which no other but he existed. Occasionally there were the dim signals from deep within the cavern in which another man was located - so that each might grope toward the other. Yet because they did not know one another, and could not understand one another, and dared not trust one another, and felt from infancy the terrors and insecurity of that ultimate isolation - there was the hunted fear of man for man, the savage rapacity of man toward man. — Isaac Asimov

I have never, in all my life, not for one moment, been tempted toward religion of any kind. The fact is that I feel no spiritual void. I have my philosophy of life, which does not include any aspect of the supernatural and which I find totally satisfying. I am, in short, a rationalist and believe only that which reason tells me is so. — Isaac Asimov

The action of social revolution and the reaction of guarding against such revolution or combating it once it has begun are the causes of a great deal of the human misery with which history is permeated. — Isaac Asimov

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety. — Isaac Asimov

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. — Isaac Asimov

People tended to avoid the humiliation of failure by joining the obviously winning side even against their own opinions. — Isaac Asimov

It is the chief characteristic of the religion of science that it works. — Isaac Asimov

The advance of genetic engineering makes it quite conceivable that we will begin to design our own evolutionary progress. — Isaac Asimov

I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time. — Isaac Asimov

He would have to ask questions constantly, take nothing for granted. There would be so many opportunities to miss the obvious, so many chances to misunderstand, so many ways of taking the wrong path. 11 — Isaac Asimov

He's a pygmy with only one talent, the ability to convince others he's a giant." Lamont — Isaac Asimov

flagitious mistresses. It was — Isaac Asimov

Scientific truth is beyond loyalty and disloyalty. — Isaac Asimov

Custom is second nature. Be accustomed to a bald head, sufficiently accustomed, and hair on it would seem monstrous. — Isaac Asimov

In fact, once when I imprinted on a young lady's lips a chaste and fatherly kiss for about five minutes, I stopped and said, sorrowfully, "Wouldn't you rather be kissed by a twenty-one-year-old boy?"
She frowned and said, "Of course not. If you'd ever been kissed by a twenty-one-year-old boy you'd know better than to ask."
Remember that. In any direct competition, the old man is bound to win and the young man knows it. — Isaac Asimov

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster. — Isaac Asimov

Ogden Nash wrote a line that I have always remembered: "The old men know when an old man dies." With the years, that line has become ever more poignant to me. After all, an old person to one who has known him for a long time is not an "old person" but is much more likely to be thought of as the younger person who inhabits our memory, vigorous and vibrant. When an old person dies who has been a part of your life, it is part of your youth that dies. And though you survive yourself, you must watch death take away the world of your youth, little by little. — Isaac Asimov

Any decent politician is masochistic enough to dream now and then of going down in flames while the angels sing. — Isaac Asimov

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

Computerization eliminates the middleman — Isaac Asimov

The temptation was great to muster what force we could and put up a fight. It's the easiest way out, and the most satisfactory to self-respect
but, nearly invariably, the stupidest. — Isaac Asimov

It's hard not to like Asimov; he's a really likable guy. — Cory Doctorow

No matter how carefully records are kept and filed and computerized, they grow fuzzy with time. Stories grow by accretion. Tales accumulate
like dust. The longer the time lapse, the dustier the history
until it degenerates into fables. — Isaac Asimov

It amounts to a diseased attitude - a conditioned reflex that shunts aside the independence of your minds whenever it is a question of opposing authority. — Isaac Asimov

I want to be a human being, nothing more and nothing less ... I don't suppose we can ever stop hating each other, but why encourage that by keeping the old labels with their ready-made history of millennial hate? — Isaac Asimov

I came into science fiction at a very good time, when the doors were getting thrown open to all kinds of more experimental writing, more literary writing, riskier writing. It wasn't all imitation Heinlein or Asimov. And of course, women were creeping in, infiltrating. Infesting the premises. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Life would be impossible on such a planet. It wouldn't get enough heat and light, and if it rotated there would be total darkness half of every day. There wouldn't be any native inhabitants. You couldn't expect life
which is fundamentally dependent on light
to develop under such extreme conditions of light deprivation. Half of every axial rotation spent in Darkness! No, nothing could exist under conditions like that. — Isaac Asimov

Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction
its essence
has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all. — Isaac Asimov

All humanity could share a common insanity and be immersed in a common illusion while living in a common chaos. That can't be disproved, but we have no choice but to follow our senses. — Isaac Asimov

Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil-but there is no way around them. — Isaac Asimov

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. — Isaac Asimov

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. — Isaac Asimov

It's one thing to predict [the complete breakdown of civilization]. It's something else again to be right in the middle of it. It's a very humbling thing ... for an academic like me to find his abstract theories turning into concrete reality ... It was all just so many words to me, really, just a philosophical exercise, completely abstract. — Isaac Asimov

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

Today's science fiction is tomorrow's science fact. — Isaac Asimov

The greatest inventors are unknown to us. Someone invented the wheel - but who? — Isaac Asimov

The history of science is full of revolutionary advances that required small insights that anyone might have had, but that, in fact, only one person did. — Isaac Asimov

All right, Schwartz, tackle my mind now. Go as deep as you want. I was born on Baronn in the Sirius Sector. I lived my life in an atmosphere of anti-Terrestrialism in the formative years, so I can't help what flaws and follies lie at the roots of my subconscious. But look on the surface and tell me if, in my adult years, I have not fought bigotry in myself. Not in others; that would be easy. But in myself, and as hard as I could. — Isaac Asimov

Jessie rummaged through her purse for the necessary equipment. If there were one thing, Baley had once said solemnly, that had resisted mechanical improvement since medieval times, it was a woman's purse. — Isaac Asimov

Murray said, "Is this Heaven?"
The Voice said, "This is no place as you understand place."
Murray was embarrassed, but the next question had to be asked. "Pardon me if I sound like a jackass. Are you God? — Isaac Asimov

It has been said in this courtroom that only a human being can be free. It seems to me that only someone who wishes for freedom can be free. I wish for freedom. — Isaac Asimov

It could be considered that science, as science, had failed the outer worlds. To be reaccepted it would have to present itself in another guise - and it has done just that. It works out beautifully." "Interesting!" The mayor placed his arms around his — Isaac Asimov

One might accept death reasoningly, with every aspect of the conscious mind, but the body was a brute beast that knew nothing of reason. — Isaac Asimov

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

He supposed it was inevitable. Dip a person into one particular specialty deeply enough and long enough, and he would automatically begin to assume that specialists in all other fields were magicians, judging the depth of their wisdom by the breadth of his own ignorance ... — Isaac Asimov

After years of finding mathematics easy, I finally reached integral calculus and came up against a barrier. I realized that this was as far as I could go, and to this day I have never successfully gone beyond it in any but the most superficial way. — Isaac Asimov

What lasts in the reader's mind is not the phrase but the effect the phrase created: laughter, tears, pain, joy. If the phrase is not affecting the reader, what's it doing there? Make it do its job or cut it without mercy or remorse. — Isaac Asimov

Science does not promise absolute truth, nor does it consider that such a thing necessarily exists. Science does not even promise that everything in the Universe is amenable to the scientific process. — Isaac Asimov

Schiller. A German dramatist of three centuries ago. In a play about Joan of Arc, he said, 'Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.' I'm no god and I'll contend no longer. — Isaac Asimov

Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014.
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.
"Visit to The World's Fair of 2014," The New York Times, August 1964 — Isaac Asimov

Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly. — Isaac Asimov

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

There are always individuals who pit their minds against the general modes of thought and who are arrogant enough to feel that they alone are right and that the many are wrong. — Isaac Asimov

Now why should there be a special word for a man with dark skin? There was no special word for a man with blue eyes, or large ears, or curly hair. — Isaac Asimov

The ones that landed near the bathroom are Bad Tolkien imitations or transcripts of a D&D adventure; bad Herbert, Heinlein, and Asimov are below the television; and these on the bed are the ones whose authors I want to hunt down personally and slap. — Sharyn McCrumb

But emotion had come upon him after all. Not for fifty billion people. What in Time did he care for fifty billion people? There was just one. One person. — Isaac Asimov

I don't know. How did Beethoven hear the Ninth Symphony in his head before he wrote it down? The brain's a pretty good computer, too, isn't it? — Isaac Asimov

Society is much more easily soothed than one's own conscience. — Isaac Asimov

Where any answer is possible, all answers are meaningless. — Isaac Asimov

In my life there have been several individuals whose presence made it easier for me to think, pleasanter to make my responses. — Isaac Asimov

How then to enforce peace? Not by reason, certainly, nor by education. If a man could not look at the fact of peace and the fact of war and choose the former in preference to the latter, what additional argument could persuade him? What could be more eloquent as a condemnation of war than war itself? — Isaac Asimov

We must not be taken in by the myth of youth, the unending propaganda to the effect that young men are younger than old men; that they are better looking; that they are slimmer, stronger and more athletic; that they can hold a girl in more romantic fashion and speak more sweetly. — Isaac Asimov

After a long time, I decided that the Three Laws govern the manner in which my positronic pathways behave. At all times, under all stimuli the Laws constrain the direction and intensity of positronic flow along those pathways so that I always know what to do. Yet the level of knowledge of what to do is not always the same. There are times when my doing-as-I-must is under less constraint than at other times. I have always noticed that the lower the positronomotive potential, then the further removed from certainty is my decision as to which action to take. And the further removed from certainty I am, the nearer I am to ill being. To decide an action in a millisecond rather than a nanosecond produces a sensation I would not wish to be prolonged. What then, I thought to myself, madam, if I were utterly without Laws, as humans are? What if I could make no clear decision on what response to make to some given set of conditions? It would be unbearable and I do not willingly think of it. — Isaac Asimov

Martianus Capella strove to collect what he considered the highest accomplishments of his culture, the Seven Liberal Arts, and his collection - in weird poesical format - seemed a candle to many, during the Dark Ages. That story inspired Isaac Asimov, by the way, to write his famed Foundation sci-fi series. — David Brin

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

It is the obvious which is so difficult to see most of the time. People say 'It's as plain as the nose on your face.' But how much of the nose on your face can you see, unless someone holds a mirror up to you? — Isaac Asimov

They recognize the Master, now that I have preached Truth to them. All the robots do. — Isaac Asimov

It's just that old people always think young people haven't really learned about love; and young people think that old people have forgotten about love; and, you know, they're both wrong. — Isaac Asimov

You mean that this is a matter of patriotism and traders aren't patriotic?"
"Notoriously not. Pioneers never are. — Isaac Asimov

So, in a Civil Service where smooth and sociable performance was more useful than an individualistic competence, Enderby went up the scale quickly, and was at the Commissioner level when Baley himself was nothing more than a C-5. — Isaac Asimov