Isaac Asimov Quotes

281 Sourced Quotes

Many adults, whether consciously or unconsciously, find it beneath their adult dignity to do anything as childish as read a book, think a thought, or get an idea. Adults are rarely embarrassed at having forgotten what little algebra or geography they once learned.

Isaac Asimov
If it is exciting to probe the unknown and shed light on what was dark before, then more and more excitement surely lies ahead of us.

Isaac Asimov
It is remarkable, Hardin, how the religion of science has grabbed hold.

Isaac Asimov
What I will be remembered for are the Foundation Trilogy and the Three Laws of Robotics. What I want to be remembered for is no one book, or no dozen books. Any single thing I have written can be paralleled or even surpassed by something someone else has done. However, my total corpus for quantity, quality and variety can be duplicated by no one else. That is what I want to be remembered for.

Isaac Asimov
I believe that scientific knowledge has fractal properties; that no matter how much we learn, whatever is left, however small it may seem, is just as infinitely complex as the whole was to start with. That, I think, is the secret of the Universe.

Isaac Asimov
The first law of dietetics seems to be: if it tastes good, it's bad for you.

Isaac Asimov
[Death] is an essential part of the successful functioning of life... new organisms cannot perform their role properly unless the old ones are removed from the scene after they have performed their function in producing the new. In short, the death of the individual is essential to the life of the species.

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
He always pictured himself a libertarian, which to my way of thinking means "I want the liberty to grow rich and you can have the liberty to starve". It's easy to believe that no one should depend on society for help when you yourself happen not to need such help.

Isaac Asimov
My answer to the question Why do you write? is that I write for the same reason I breathe—because if I didn't, I would die.

Isaac Asimov
I don't believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books.

Isaac Asimov
You don't have to be able to lay eggs to know when one of them is rotten.

Isaac Asimov
There never can be a man so lost as one who is lost in the vast and intricate corridors of his own lonely mind, where none may reach and none may save.

Isaac Asimov
Anything you make forbidden gains sexual attractiveness. Would you be particularly interested in women's breasts if you lived in a society in which they were displayed at all times?

Isaac Asimov
The greatest weapons in the conquest of knowledge are an understanding mind and the inexorable curiosity that drives it on.

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
We're forever teetering on the brink of the unknowable, and trying to understand what can't be understood.

Isaac Asimov
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.

Isaac Asimov
The human brain, then, is the most complicated organization of matter that we know.

Isaac Asimov
Nonsense, Weston denied, with an involuntary nervous shiver. That's completely ridiculous. We had a long discussion at the time we bought Robbie about the First Law of Robotics. You know that it is impossible for a robot to harm a human being; that long before enough can go wrong to alter that First Law, a robot would be completely inoperable. It's a mathematical impossibility. Besides I have an engineer from U.S. Robots here twice a year to give the poor gadget a complete overhaul. Why, there's no more chance of anything at all going wrong with Robbie than there is of you or I suddenly going looney—considerably less, in fact. Besides, how are you going to take him away from Gloria?

Isaac Asimov