Isaac Asimov Quotes

Encyclopedias don’t win wars.

The Master created humans first as the lowest type, most easily formed. Gradually, he replaced them by robots, the next higher step, and finally he created me, to take the place of the last humans.

Lord Dorwin, gentlemen, in five days of discussion didn't say one damned thing, and said it so you never noticed.

Author's Note: This story starts with section 6. This is not a mistake. I have my own subtle reasoning. So, just read, and enjoy.

Grip the nettle firmly and it will become a stick with which to beat your enemy.

It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong.

One might suppose that reality must be held to at all costs. However, though that may be the moral thing to do, it is not necessarily the most useful thing to do. The Greeks themselves chose the ideal over the real in their geometry and demonstrated very well that far more could be achieved by consideration of abstract line and form than by a study of the real lines and forms of the world; the greater understanding achieved through abstraction could be applied most usefully to the very reality that was ignored in the process of gaining knowledge.

"Schiller. A German dramatist of three centuries ago. In a play about Joan of Arc, he said, 'Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.' I'm no god and I'll contend no longer. Let it go, Pete, and go your way. Maybe the world will last our time and, if not, there's nothing that can be done anyway. I'm sorry, Pete. You fought the good fight, but you lost, and I'm through."

"A good job is one in which I don't have to work, and get paid a lot of money." When I heard that I cheered and yelled and felt that he should be given an A+, for he had perfectly articulated the American dream of those who despise knowledge. What a politician that kid would have made.

Naturally, there's got to be a limit for I don't expect to live forever, but I do intend to hang on as long as possible.

There is no merit to discipline under ideal circumstances. I must have it in the face of death or it is worthless.

One might accept death reasoningly, with every aspect of the conscious mind, but the body was a brute beast that knew nothing of reason.

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.

If a conclusion is not poetically balanced, it cannot be scientifically true.

The advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.