Isaac Asimov Quotes

281 Sourced Quotes

You know that prudery is only the other side of prurience. The words are even on the same page in the dictionary.

Isaac Asimov
So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You'd better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can't rearrange the universe.

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
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
Books … hold within them the gathered wisdom of humanity, the collected knowledge of the world's thinkers, the amusement and excitement built up by the imaginations of brilliant people. Books contain humor, beauty, wit, emotion, thought, and, indeed, all of life. Life without books is empty.

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
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
It was easy to cover up ignorance by the mystical word intuition.

Isaac Asimov
But life is glorious when it is happy; days are carefree when they are happy; the interplay of thought and imagination is far and superior to that of muscle and sinew. Let me tell you, if you don't know it from your own experience, that reading a good book, losing yourself in the interest of words and thoughts, is for some people (me, for instance) an incredible intensity of happiness.

Isaac Asimov
It is well-known that the friend of a conqueror is but the last victim.

Isaac Asimov
If you suspect that my interest in the Bible is going to inspire me with sudden enthusiasm for Judaism and make me a convert of mountain-moving fervor and that I shall suddenly grow long earlocks and learn Hebrew and go about denouncing the heathen — you little know the effect of the Bible on me. Properly read, it is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.

Isaac Asimov
All the hundreds of millions of people who, in their time, believed the Earth was flat never succeeded in unrounding it by an inch.

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

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

Isaac Asimov
Consider the most famous pure dystopian tale of modern times, 1984, by George Orwell (1903-1950), published in 1948 (the same year in which Walden Two was published). I consider it an abominably poor book. It made a big hit (in my opinion) only because it rode the tidal wave of cold war sentiment in the United States.

Isaac Asimov
There's something about a pious man such as he. He will cheerfully cut your throat if it suits him, but he will hesitate to endanger the welfare of your immaterial and problematical soul.

Isaac Asimov
Societies create their own history and tend to wipe out lowly beginnings, either by forgetting them or inventing totally fictitious heroic rescues.

Isaac Asimov
I know nothing of that directly; I only know what I have been told by other young ones who couldn't have known directly either. I want to find out the truth about them and the wanting has grown until there is more of curiosity in me than fear.

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

Isaac Asimov
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."

Isaac Asimov
Secrecy as deep as this is past possibility without nonexistence as well.

Isaac Asimov
An atom blaster is a good weapon, but it can point both ways.

Isaac Asimov
You see, proteins, as I probably needn't tell you, are immensely complicated groupings of amino acids and certain other specialized compounds, arranged in intricate three-dimensional patterns that are as unstable as sunbeams on a cloudy day. It is this instability that is life, since it is forever changing its position in an effort to maintain its identity—in the manner of a long rod balanced on an acrobat's nose.

Isaac Asimov
Tell me why the stars do shine, Tell me why the ivy twines, Tell me what makes skies so blue, And I'll tell you why I love you. Nuclear fusion makes stars to shine, Tropisms make the ivy twine, Raleigh scattering make skies so blue, Testicular hormones are why I love you.

Isaac Asimov
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.

Isaac Asimov
There are no nations! There is only humanity. And if we don't come to understand that right soon, there will be no nations, because there will be no humanity.

Isaac Asimov
Do not forget that a traitor within our ranks, known to us, can do more harm to the enemy than a loyal man can do good to us.

Isaac Asimov
The unwritten motto of United States Robot and Mechanical Men Corp. was well-known: No employee makes the same mistake twice. He is fired the first time.

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