Isaac Asimov Quotes

281 Sourced Quotes

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

Isaac Asimov
[Creationists] make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.

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, the concept around which it revolves, has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.

Isaac Asimov
Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know — and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.

Isaac Asimov
Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.

Isaac Asimov
In all the known history of Mankind, advances have been made primarily in physical technology; in the capacity of handling the inanimate world about Man. Control of self and society has been left to to chance or to the vague gropings of intuitive ethical systems based on inspiration and emotion. As a result no culture of greater stability than about fifty-five percent has ever existed, and these only as the result of great human misery.

Isaac Asimov
Tritt listened placidly, clearly understanding nothing, but content to be listening; while Odeen, transmitting nothing, was as clearly content to be lecturing.

Isaac Asimov
Mathematicians deal with large numbers sometimes, but never in their income.

Isaac Asimov
Inertia! Our ruling class knows one law; no change. Despotism! They know one rule; force. Maldistribution! They know one desire; to hold what is theirs.

Isaac Asimov
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.

Isaac Asimov
The human mind works at low efficiency. Twenty percent is the figure usually given. When, momentarily, there is a flash of greater power, it is termed a hunch, or insight, or intuition.

Isaac Asimov
You just can't differentiate between a robot and the very best of humans.

Isaac Asimov
Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete.

Isaac Asimov
The age of the pulp magazine was the last in which youngsters, to get their primitive material, were forced to be literate.

Isaac Asimov
Isn't it sad that you can tell people that the ozone layer is being depleted, the forests are being cut down, the deserts are advancing steadily, that the greenhouse effect will raise the sea level 200 feet, that overpopulation is choking us, that pollution is killing us, that nuclear war may destroy us - and they yawn and settle back for a comfortable nap. But tell them that the Martians are landing, and they scream and run.

Isaac Asimov
You don't need to predict the future. Just choose a future -- a good future, a useful future -- and make the kind of prediction that will alter human emotions and reactions in such a way that the future you predicted will be brought about. Better to make a good future than predict a bad one.

Isaac Asimov
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
There's so much knowledge to be had that specialists cling to their specialties as a shield against having to know anything about anything else. They avoid being drowned.

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

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

Isaac Asimov
The only function of a school is to make self-education easier; failing that, it does nothing. What's more, formal education stops; self-education never does.

Isaac Asimov
The world doesn't mind spending $400 billion every years on arms and armaments, never getting anything back from it except a chance to commit suicide.

Isaac Asimov
Science is a process. It is a way of thinking, a manner of approaching and of possibly resolving problems, a route by which one can produce order and sense out of disorganized and chaotic observations. Through it we achieve useful conclusions and results that are compelling and upon which there is a tendency to agree.

Isaac Asimov
If we only obey those rules that we think are just and reasonable, then no rule will stand, for there is no rule that some will not think is unjust and unreasonable.

Isaac Asimov
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.

Isaac Asimov