Isaac Asimov Quotes

Certain success evicts one from the paradise of winning against the odds.

The undramatic fact is that I just think and think and think until I have something <nowiki>[for a story],</nowiki> and there is nothing marvelous or artistic about the phenomenon.

There is less trouble and trauma involved in writing a new piece than in trying to salvage an unsatisfactory old one.

The purpose of aphorisms is to keep fools who have memorised them from having nothing to say.

It is surely better to be wronged than to do wrong.

I wouldn't give an astrologer the time of day.

In memory yet green, in joy still felt, The scenes of life rise sharply into view. We triumph; Life’s disasters are undealt, And while all else is old, the world is new.

I simply don't think it is reasonable to use IQ tests to produce results of questionable value, which may then serve to justify racists in their own minds and to help bring about the kinds of tragedies we have already witnessed earlier in this century.

Science Digest asked me to see the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind and write an article for them on the science it contained. I saw the picture and was appalled. I remained appalled even after a doctor's examination had assured me that no internal organs had been shaken loose by its ridiculous soundwaves. (If you can't be good, be loud, some say, and Close Encounters was very loud.) ... Hollywood must deal with large audiences, most of whom are utterly unfamiliar with good science fiction. It has to bend to them, meet them at least half-way. Fully appreciating that, I could enjoy Planet of the Apes and Star Wars. Star Wars was entertainment for the masses and did not try to be anything more. Leave your sophistication at the door, get into the spirit, and you can have a fun ride. ... Seeing a rotten picture for the special effects is like eating a tough steak for the smothered onions, or reading a bad book for the dirty parts. Optical wizardry is something a movie can do that a book can't but it is no substitute for a story, for logic, for meaning. It is ornamentation, not substance. In fact, whenever a science fiction picture is praised overeffusively for its special effects, I know it's a bad picture. Is that all they can find to talk about?

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be ... This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.

Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today — but the core of science fiction, its essence, the concept around which it revolves, has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.

What, then, of human activities? Is humankind itself hastening its own end? Man has, for instance, been burning carbon-containing fuel — wood, coal, oil, gas — at a steadily accelerating rate. All these fuels form carbon dioxide. Some is absorbed by plants and the oceans but not as fast as it is produced. This means the carbon dioxide content of the air is going up — slightly but nevertheless up. Carbon dioxide retains heat, and even a small rise means a warming of the Earth's atmosphere. This may result in the melting of the polar ice caps with unusual speed, flooding the world before we have learned climate control. In reverse, our industrial civilization is making our atmosphere dustier so that it reflects more sunlight away and cools the Earth slightly — thus making possible a glacial advance in a few centuries, also before we have learned climate control.

We cannot afford enemies any more... Within a generation or two human society will be in total destructive disarray. Heaven knows how bad it will be. The most optimistic view I can take is this: Things will get so bad within a dozen years that it will become obvious ... that we must, whether were like each other or not, work together. We have no choice in the matter. ... Technologically, we can stop overpopulation, but we have to persuade people to accept the technology. ... Babies are the enemies of the human race ... Let's consider it this way: by the time the world doubles its population, the amount of energy we will be using will be increased sevenfold which means probably the amount of pollution that we are producing will also be increased sevenfold. If we are now threatened by pollution at the present rate, how will we be threatened with sevenfold pollution by, say, 2010 A.D., distributed among twice the population? We'll be having to grow twice the food out of soil that is being poisoned at seven times the rate.

The history of science is full of revolutionary advances that required small insights that anyone might have had, but that, in fact, only one person did.

Generals are, as a matter of course, allowed to be far more idiotic than ordinary human beings are permitted to be.