Isaac Asimov Quotes

281 Sourced Quotes

No physicist who is even marginally sane doubts the validity of special relativity.

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
[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
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
Many a prophecy, by the mere force of its being believed, is transmuted to fact.

Isaac Asimov
In theory, there is nothing the computer can do that the human mind can not do. The computer merely takes a finite amount of data and performs a finite number of operations upon them. The human mind can duplicate the process

Isaac Asimov
A good question is, of course, the key by which infinite answers can be educed.

Isaac Asimov
The tyranny that now exists is actual. That which may exist in the future is potential. If we are always to draw back from change with the thought that the change may be for the worse, then there is no hope at all of ever escaping injustice.

Isaac Asimov
Unless we are willing to settle down into a world that is our prison, we must be ready to move beyond Earth...

Isaac Asimov
As we trace the development of man over the ages, it seems in many respects a tale of glory and victory; of the development of the brain; of the discovery of fire, of the building of cities and of civilization; of the triumph of reason; of the filling of the Earth and the reaching out to sea and space.

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
It is one thing to be able to make predictions. It is another to listen to the predictions you have made and to act upon them.

Isaac Asimov
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
Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world.

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? What tremendous feat of dialectic could carry with it a tenth the power of a single gutted ship with its ghastly cargo?

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

Isaac Asimov
Increasing knowledge leads not to conquest only, but to utter defeat as well, for one learns not only of new potentialities, but also of new limitations.

Isaac Asimov
Why is it, I wonder, that anyone who displays superior athletic ability is an object of admiration to his classmates, while one who displays superior mental ability is an object of hatred?

Isaac Asimov
To any who know the star field well from one certain reference point, stars are as individual as people. Jump ten parsecs, however, and not even your own sun is recognizable.

Isaac Asimov
There is no one so insufferable as a person who gives no other excuse for a peculiar action than saying he had been directed to it in a dream.

Isaac Asimov
The important prediction is not the automobile, but the parking problem; not radio, but the soap opera; not the income tax, but the expense account; not the Bomb, but the nuclear stalemate

Isaac Asimov
The orchard of science is a vast globe-encircling monster, without a map, and known to no one man; indeed, to no group of men fewer than the whole international mass of creative scientists. Within it, each observer clings to his own well-known and well-loved clump of trees. If he looks beyond, it is usually with a guilty sigh.

Isaac Asimov
Reaching the moon by three-man vessels in one long bound from Earth is like casting a thin thread across space. The main effort, in the coming decades, will be to strengthen this thread; to make it a cord, a cable, and, finally, a broad highway.

Isaac Asimov
Considering what human beings do and have done to human beings (and to other living things as well)... I can never imagine what the devil people think computers can add to the horrors.

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
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
The Bible contains legendary, historical, and ethical contents. It is quite possible to consider them separately, and one doesn't have to accept the legends in order to get the ethics. Fundamentalists make a grave mistake to insist on the letter of the writings, because they drive away many who can't swallow the Adam-and-Eve bit.

Isaac Asimov
It is in meeting the great tests that mankind can most successfully rise to great heights. Out of danger and restless insecurity comes the force that pushes mankind to newer and loftier conquests.

Isaac Asimov
I am the beneficiary of a lucky break in the genetic sweepstakes.

Isaac Asimov
The Earth faces environmental problems right now that threaten the imminent destruction of civilization and the end of the planet as a livable world. Humanity cannot afford to waste its financial and emotional resources on endless, meaningless quarrels between each group and all others. there must be a sense of globalism in which the world unites to solve the real problems that face all groups alike.

Isaac Asimov