Isaac Asimov Quotes

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.

You underestimate the depths to which mysticism can bury rationality, Golan.

a Galaxis a vesztébe rohan!

Give us but the chance and a new generation of Earthmen would grow to maturity, lacking insularity and believing wholeheartedly in the oneness of Man.

And so it happened, that when others bent their knee, he refused and added loudly that his ancestors in their time bowed no knee to any stinking mayor. And in his ancestors' time the mayor was elected anyhow, and kicked out at will, and that the only people that inherited anything by right of birth were the congenital idiots.

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. V

Se você tivesse nascido numa cela e crescido num corredor, trabalhando num cubículo, com férias numa varanda repleta de gente, ao sair para o ar livre, sem nada além do céu sobre si, talvez lhe desse um ataque de nervos.

I am trying now to re-create in my mind the picture of the man as I saw him in 1939- he, the revered author of Sinister Barriers, I the novice. I think I can rely on my near-photographic memory for the purpose. (I call it "near-photographic" because I can only remember things that happen to be lying around near photographs.)

Let's see, as I recall, he is six-feet seven-inches tall (when he is sitting down, that is) with a long and majestic English face. Then, too, I distinctly remember, there was a small flashing golden aura about his head, the occasional play of hissing flashes when he moved it suddenly, and the distant rumble of thunder when he spoke.

What is an Earthman? "An inferior sort of human that ought not to be allowed on Solaria because he breeds disease, master."

They couldn't have dropped the bomb for all the Galaxy. If they could have, they would have been large-primate themselves in their manner of thinking, and there are worse things than merely the end of everything.

Mantener la disciplina en circunstancias ideales no tiene ningún mérito.

I never thought that, in the sense of believing it. It is merely an alternative to be considered.

it is the chief characteristic of the religion of science that it works,

Human beings, in terraforming a world, leave out the thorns and thistles, whatever they may be, and human beings then have to labor to keep the world going. It isn't a self-supporting organism as Gaia is. It is rather a miscellaneous collection of Isolates and the collection isn't miscellaneous enough to allow the ecological balance to persist indefinitely. If humanity disappears, and if its guiding hands are removed, the world's pattern of life inevitably begins to fall apart. The planet unterraforms itself.

Well, besides, I've arranged with the computer that anyone who doesn't look and sound like one of us will be killed if he — or she — tries to board the ship. I've taken the liberty of explaining that to the Port Commander. I told him very politely that I would love to turn off that particular facility out of deference to the reputation that the Sayshell City Spaceport holds for absolute integrity and security — throughout the Galaxy, I said — but the ship is a new model and I didn't know how to turn it off.
"He didn't believe that, surely."
"Of course not! But he had to pretend he did, as otherwise he would have had no choice but to be insulted. And since there would be nothing he could do about that, being insulted would only lead to humiliation. And since he didn't want that, the simplest path to follow was to believe what I said."
"And that's another example of how people are?"
"Yes. You'll get used to this."