ISAAC ASIMOV QUOTES III

American author & professor of biochemistry (1920-1992)

There's so much knowledge to be had that specialists cling to their specialties as a shield against having to know anything about anything else. They avoid being drowned.

ISAAC ASIMOV

Prelude to Foundation


Words are a pretty fuzzy substitute for mathematical equations.

ISAAC ASIMOV

Foundation and Empire

Tags: words


In a properly automated and educated world, then, machines may prove to be the true humanizing influence. It may be that machines will do the work that makes life possible and that human beings will do all the other things that make life pleasant and worthwhile.

ISAAC ASIMOV

Robot Visions

Tags: machines


All the suffering that humanity ever knew can be traced to the one fact that no man in the history of the Galaxy ... could really understand one another. Every human being lived behind an impenetrable wall of choking mist within which no other but he existed.

ISAAC ASIMOV

Second Foundation

Tags: understanding


It is the invariable lesson to humanity that distance in time, and in space as well, lends focus. It is not recorded, incidentally, that the lesson has ever been permanently learned.

ISAAC ASIMOV

Foundation and Empire


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.

ISAAC ASIMOV

"My Own View", The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

Tags: science fiction


A good question is, of course, the key by which infinite answers can be educed.

ISAAC ASIMOV

Foundation's Edge


If you ask for too much, you lose even that which you have.

ISAAC ASIMOV

Foundation's Edge

Tags: greed


Old men tend to forget what thought was like in their youth; they forget the quickness of the mental jump, the daring of the youthful intuition, the agility of the fresh insight. They become accustomed to the more plodding varieties of reason, and because this is more than made up by the accumulation of experience, old men think themselves wiser than the young.

ISAAC ASIMOV

Pebble in the Sky

Tags: wisdom


You wait for the war to happen like vultures. If you want to help, prevent the war. Don't save the remnants. Save them all.

ISAAC ASIMOV

"The Gentle Vultures", Super-Science Fiction, Dec. 1957

Tags: war


It is the chief characteristic of the religion of science that it works.

ISAAC ASIMOV

Foundation

Tags: science


To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.

ISAAC ASIMOV

Foundation


It was obvious that bigotry was never a one-way operation, that hatred bred hatred.

ISAAC ASIMOV

Pebble in the Sky

Tags: racism


Why ... did so many people spend their lives not trying to find answers to questions -- not even thinking of questions to begin with? Was there anything more exciting in life than seeking answers?

ISAAC ASIMOV

Prelude to Foundation

Tags: questions


To be perfectly honest with you, I don't really see what the big deal is about getting to the Moon with the computers and the mid-course-corrections. I know you are a bunch of engineers, and you know better than I do, but I ask you ... once you get there beyond the atmosphere, do you or do you not see the Moon?

ISAAC ASIMOV

lecture at Newark College of Engineering, Nov. 8, 1974

Tags: moon


All the hundreds of millions of people who, in their time, believed the Earth was flat never succeeded in unrounding it by an inch.

ISAAC ASIMOV

The Planet that Wasn't


In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.

ISAAC ASIMOV

Fantastic Voyage II

Tags: life


All humanity could share a common insanity and be immersed in a common illusion while living in a common chaos. That can't be disproved, but we have no choice but to follow our senses.

ISAAC ASIMOV

Foundation's Edge


When asked for advice by beginners. Know your ending, I say, or the river of your story may finally sink into the desert sands and never reach the sea.

ISAAC ASIMOV

I, Asimov: A Memoir


You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason---if you pick the proper postulates.

ISAAC ASIMOV

I, Robot

Tags: reason