Top 447 Quotes & Sayings by Isaac Asimov - Page 8

It is always useful, you see, to subject the past life of reform politicians to rather inquisitive research.

If there is a category of human being for whom his work ought to speak for itself, it is the writer.

Love life seems to be that factor which requires the largest quantity of magical tinkering.

Courtiers don't take wagers against the king's skill. There is the deadly danger of winning.

Although we will hate and fight the machines, we will be supplanted anyway, and rightly so, for the intelligent machines to which we will give birth may, better than we, carry on the striving toward the goal of understanding and using the Universe, climbing to heights we ourselves could never aspire to.

It is the nature of the mind that makes individuals kin, and the differences in the shape, form or manner of the material atoms out of whose intricate relationships that mind is built are altogether trivial.

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.

[O]ur statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.

I can't bear to hear a human being spoken of with contempt just because of his group identification...It's these respectable people here who create those hooligans out there.

When I feel difficulty coming on, I switch to another book I'm writing. When I get back to the problem, my unconscious has solved it.

So, then, what is style? There are two chief aspects of any piece of writing: 1) what you say and 2) how you say it. The former is "content" and the latter is "style."

There is no Master but the Master,” he said, “and QT-1 is his prophet.

On Earth, we are unmanned by our longing for a pastoral past that never really existed; and that, if it had existed, could never exist again...on the Moon, there is no past to long for or dream about. There is no direction but forward.

Why this reluctance to make the change? We fear the process of reeducation.

Now any dogma, based primarily on faith and emotionalism, is a dangerous weapon to use on others, since it is almost impossible to guarantee that the weapon will never be turned on the user.

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 every man must take on a science fictional way of thinking.

Fertility is hereditary. If your parents didn't have any children, neither will you. I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

True literacy is becoming an arcane art, and the nation is steadily "dumbing down."

It took me thirty-six years; and, in some fifty stories, ranging in length from short-shorts to novels, I think I must have touched, in one way or another, on every aspect of computers and computerization. And (mark this!) I did it without ever knowing anything at all about computers in any real sense. To this day, I don't. I am totally inept with machinery... on my typewriter I turn out books at the contemptible rate of one a month

We are all victimized by the natural perversity of inanimate objects...and the assorted human beings who perpetuate and maintain this perversity.

I have written 240 books on a wide variety of topics. . . . Some of it I based on education I received in my school, but most of it was backed by other ways of learning - chiefly in the books I obtained in the public library.

I'm not a speed reader. I'm a speed understander.

Postulates are based on assumption and adhered to by faith. Nothing in the Universe can shake them.

I type 90 words per minute on the typewriter; I type 100 words per minute on the word processor. But, of course, I don't keep that up indefinitely - every once in a while I do have to think a few seconds.

It was easy to cover up ignorance by the mystical word "intuition.

The whole world might know you and acclaim you, but someone in the past, forever unreachable, forever unknowing, spoils it all.

The facts, gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching.