Isaac Asimov Quotes

Had Hannibal had a government behind him that knew how to exploit victories – had he been born a Roman, for instance – he might have conquered the world.

It seemed to him <nowiki>[</nowiki>Euphemius<nowiki>]</nowiki> it would be a brilliant notion to call in an outside force to fight on his behalf. This same brilliant notion has occurred to participants in civil wars uncounted times in history and it has ended in catastrophe just about every time, since those called in invariably take over for themselves. Of all history's lessons, this seems to be the plainest, and the most frequently ignored.

It is all too easy to forget that there are emotional motivations in history, as well as economic ones.

There has never been any custom, however useless it may become with changing conditions, that isn't clung to desperately simply because it is something old and familiar.

Probably, the most-often-repeated lesson in history is that foreigners who are called in to help one side in a civil war take over for themselves. It is a lesson that seems never to be learned despite endless repetition.

It is an odd fact that anyone who wishes to start a war must always make it appear that he is fighting in a just cause even if the real motive is naked aggression. Fortunately for the would-be aggressor, a "just cause" is very easy to find.

We can hope that the ways of peace will attract the Arabic nations, for their territory and opportunities are broad enough for immeasurable advance, if the energies vented in spleen, are turned instead to a modernisation of the technology, a restoration of the soil, and a renovation of the economic, social, and political structure of those great and venerable lands.

It is by the Imperial Capital that contemporaries (and posterity, too) judge an Empire, and its magnificence impresses them mightily and leads them to judge the Emperor a great man and hero, even though it may all be based on robbery, and though the provinces of the Empire may be sunk in misery.

[N]o matter how outrageous a lie may be, it will be accepted if stated loudly enough and often enough.

Religion is more conservative than any other aspect of human life.

The article was essentially about the coming disappearance of women. I pointed out that the only differences between men and women are the women are smaller and weaker than men, and women have to bear the children, and that all other differences are really social. They are born of the environment. They're not real. [...] You say, "Women are so pure and sweet and nice, if only they have the vote, they would clean up politics." So you give them the vote, and politics is just as dirty as ever. [...] If we get into the 21st century when all the work that's required to be done (and there won't be much of it) doesn't require muscles anyway (it's all a matter of closing contacts, pushing papers, whatever the heck you do), women can do it as well as men. And when it comes to children, there's going to have to be a low birth rate (we'll have to or everything goes 'blooey!'). And in addition, children will be considered, I think, the responsibility of society and not the responsibility of their mothers. Children will be far too valuable to trust to their mothers (most of them are complete incompetents as mothers).

In the world of today can there be peace anywhere until there is peace everywhere?

Generals are usually a conservative force who can be relied on to oppose social change.

Often, writers on historical events tend to consider ... a loss of willingness to fight as a sign of "decadence," as though there were something despicable about not being a bully and not being willing to engage in mass murder. Perhaps we ought to feel instead that to cease to be warlike means to begin to be civilized and decent.

476 ... is usually taken as the date of the "fall of the Roman Empire." The date, however, is a false one. No one at this period of time considered that the Roman Empire had "fallen." Indeed, it still existed and was the most powerful realm in Europe. Its capital was at Constantinople and the Emperor was Zeno. It is only because we ourselves are culturally descended from the Roman west, that we tend to ignore the continued existence of the Roman Empire in the east.