Isaac Asimov
biochemist, novelist, prose writer, autobiographer, science fiction writer, science writer, non-fiction writer, university teacher, journalist, screenwriter, writer, crime fiction writer
Read on Wikipedia1920 – 1992
All Quotes by Isaac Asimov
“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.”
““Were I to use the wits the good Spirits gave me,” he said, “then I would say this lady can not exist — for what sane man would hold a dream to be reality. Yet rather would I not be sane and lend belief to charmed, enchanted eyes.””
“People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”
““When the twenty-seven independent Trading Worlds, united only by their distrust of mother planet of the Foundation, concert an assembly among themselves, and each is big with a pride grown of its smallness, hardened by its own insularity and embittered by eternal danger — there are preliminary negotiations to be overcome of a pettiness sufficiently staggering to heart-sicken the most persevering.””
“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.”
“It is well-known that the friend of a conqueror is but the last victim.”
“I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.”
“Secrecy as deep as this is past possibility without nonexistence as well.”
“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.”
“The most hopelessly stupid man is he who is not aware that he is wise.”
“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 has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.”
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
“The house was somehow very lonely at night and Dr. Darell found that the fate of the Galaxy made remarkably little difference while his daughter’s mad little life was in danger.”
“When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.”
“Remarkable what a fragile flower romance is. A gun with a nervous operator behind it can spoil the whole thing.”
“Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.”
“The spell of power never quite releases its hold.”
“It is not only the living who are killed in war.”
“At odd and unpredictable times, we cling in fright to the past.”
“Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.”
“It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.”
“Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.”
“And above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning.”
“If there is a misuse of power, it is on her part. My crime is that I have never labored to make myself popular — I admit that much — and I have paid too little attention to fools who are old enough to be senile but young enough to have power.”
“A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.”
“Fifty years," I hackneyed, "is a long time."”
“Pelorat sighed. “I will never understand people.” “There’s nothing to it. All you have to do is take a close look at yourself and you will understand everyone else. We’re in no way different ourselves... You show me someone who can’t understand people and I’ll show you someone who has built up a false image of himself.””
“I don't expect to live forever, but I do intend to hang on as long as possible.”
“Once you get it into your head that somebody is controlling events, you can interpret everything in that light and find no reasonable certainty anywhere.”
“It takes more than capital to swing business. You've got to have the A. I. D. degree to get by - Advertising, Initiative, and Dynamics.”
““Is not all this an extraordinary concatenation of coincidence?” “List it any way you please,” said Trevize. “I don’t believe in extraordinary concatenations of coincidence.””
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
“It’s one thing to have guts; it’s another to be crazy.”
“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
““Stories grow by accretion. Tales accumulate — like dust. The longer the time lapse, the dustier the history — until it degenerates into fables.” Pelorat said, “We historians are familiar with the process, Dom. There is a certain preference for the fable. The falsely dramatic drives out the truly dull.””
“Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.”
“Societies create their own history and tend to wipe out lowly beginnings, either by forgetting them or inventing totally fictitious heroic rescues.”
“There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.”
“It was easy to cover up ignorance by the mystical word “intuition.””
“I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.”
“It is better to go to defeat with free will than to live in a meaningless security as a cog in a machine.”
“Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.”
“We abandoned the appearance of power to preserve the essence of it.”
“The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing.”
“If you were to insist I was a robot, you might not consider me capable of love in some mystic human sense, but you would not be able to distinguish my reactions from that which you would call love — so what difference would it make?”
“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.”
“I have always dealt with economic forces, rather than philosophic forces, but you can't split history into neat little non-overlapping divisions. For instance, religions tend to accumulate wealth when successful and that eventually tends to distort the economic development of a society.”
“Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know - and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.”
“How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?”
“It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.”
“You can't lick the Uncertainty Principle, man, any more than you can live on the sun. There are physical limits to what can be done.”
“Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all time low over the world.”
“To Mankind And the hope that the war against folly may someday be won, after all.”
“To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.”
““It is a mistake,” he said, “to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century.””
“He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.”
“He sat in his chair, fingers aimlessly drumming, drumming. Somewhere in the Sun, protons were clinging together with just a trifling additional avidity and with each moment that avidity grew and at some moment the delicate balance would break down . . . "And no one on Earth will live to know I was right," cried out Lamont, and blinked and blinked to keep back the tears.”
“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'”
“Tritt listened placidly, clearly understanding nothing, but content to be listening; while Odeen, transmitting nothing, was as clearly content to be lecturing.”
“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
“I don’t like anything that’s got to be. I want to know why.”
“And above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning.”
“I know nothing of that directly; I only know what I have been told by other young ones who couldn’t have known directly either. I want to find out the truth about them and the wanting has grown until there is more of curiosity in me than fear.”
“If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.”
“I fear my ignorance.”
“Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.”
“The easiest way to solve a problem is to deny it exists.”
“To insult someone we call him 'bestial. For deliberate cruelty and nature, 'human' might be the greater insult.”
“You know that prudery is only the other side of prurience. The words are even on the same page in the dictionary.”
“I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.”
“I’ve lived most of my life already and I suppose I can argue myself into believing that I have no great cause to love humanity. However, only a few people have hurt me, and if I hurt everyone in return that is unconscionable usury.”
“Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.”
“When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.”
“If an interaction is too weak to be detectable or to exert influence in any way, then by any operational definition, it doesn’t exist.”
“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.”
“There are no happy endings in history, only crisis points that pass.”
“I don't believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books.”
“Knowledge is indivisible. When people grow wise in one direction, they are sure to make it easier for themselves to grow wise in other directions as well. On the other hand, when they split up knowledge, concentrate on their own field, and scorn and ignore other fields, they grow less wise — even in their own field.”
“I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.”
“He always pictured himself a libertarian, which to my way of thinking means "I want the liberty to grow rich and you can have the liberty to starve". It's easy to believe that no one should depend on society for help when you yourself happen not to need such help.”
“All sorts of computer errors are now turning up. You'd be surprised to know the number of doctors who claim they are treating pregnant men.”
“Happiness is doing it rotten your own way.”
“Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.”
“When an old person dies who has been a part of your life, it is part of your youth that dies.”
“From my close observation of writers... they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.”
“John Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.”
“People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”
“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”
“Why, he wondered, 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?”
“Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.”
“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
“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.”
“I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.”
“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.”
“People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”
“I don't expect to live forever, but I do intend to hang on as long as possible.”
“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
“I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.”
“Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.”
“Confidence is rewarded, apparently. There was a homewhen proverb that went, "Grip the nettle firmly and it will become a stick with which to beat your enemy."”
“The dullness of fact is the mother of fiction.”
“The facts, gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching.”
“People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”
“Outside intelligences, exploring the Solar System with true impartiality, would be quite likely to enter the Sun in their records thus: Star X, spectral class G0, 4 planets plus debris.”
“An observer studying the Solar system dispassionately, and finding himself capable of bringing the four giant planets to his notice, could reasonably say that the Solar system consisted of one star, four planets, and some traces of debris.”
“The fact that the general incidence of leukemia has doubled in the last two decades may be due, partly, to the increasing use of x-rays for numerous purposes. The incidence of leukemia in doctors, who are likely to be so exposed, is twice that of the general public. In radiologists … the incidence is ten times greater.”
“Religion is more conservative than any other aspect of human life.”
“[N]o matter how outrageous a lie may be, it will be accepted if stated loudly enough and often enough.”
“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.”
“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.”
“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.”
“It is all too easy to forget that there are emotional motivations in history, as well as economic ones.”
“I recognize the necessity of animal experiments with my mind but not with my heart.”
“Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold. What does the scientist have to offer in exchange? Uncertainty! Insecurity!”
“For man to become successful, for man to establish himself as the ruler of the planet, it was necessary for him to use his brain as something more than a device to make the daily routine of getting food and evading enemies a little more efficient. Man had to learn to control his environment."”
“What I will be remembered for are the Foundation Trilogy and the Three Laws of Robotics. What I want to be remembered for is no one book, or no dozen books. Any single thing I have written can be paralleled or even surpassed by something someone else has done. However, my total corpus for quantity, quality and variety can be duplicated by no one else. That is what I want to be remembered for.”
“Surely there is no language more majestic than that of Shakespeare, Milton, and the King James Bible, and if I am to have one language that I know as only a native can know it, I consider myself unbelievably fortunate that it is English.”
“There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.”
“Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.”
“Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.”
“Straightforward preaching spoils the effectiveness of a story. If you can't resist the impulse to improve your fellow human beings, do it subtly.”
“There is no way of being almost funny or mildly funny or fairly funny or tolerably funny. You are either funny or not funny and there is nothing in between. And usually it is the writer who thinks he is funny and the reader who thinks he isn't.”
“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
“It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.”
“[S]cientific writing is abhorrently stylized and places a premium on poor quality.”
“If you're going to write a story, avoid contemporary references. They date a story and they have no staying power.”
“I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.”
“People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. They are far too ready to dismiss it and to build arcane structures of extremely rickety substance in order to avoid it. I, on the other hand, see coincidence everywhere as an inevitable consequence of the laws of probability, according to which having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Where any answer is possible, all answers are meaningless.”
“I wouldn't give an astrologer the time of day.”
“It is surely better to be wronged than to do wrong.”
“It takes more than capital to swing business. You've got to have the A. I. D. degree to get by - Advertising, Initiative, and Dynamics.”
“There is less trouble and trauma involved in writing a new piece than in trying to salvage an unsatisfactory old one.”
“The undramatic fact is that I just think and think and think until I have something and there is nothing marvelous or artistic about the phenomenon.”
“All sorts of computer errors are now turning up. You'd be surprised to know the number of doctors who claim they are treating pregnant men.”
“Certain success evicts one from the paradise of winning against the odds.”
“The military mind remains unparalleled as a vehicle of creative stupidity.”
“Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.”
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."”
“I believe that every human being with a physically normal brain can learn a great deal and can be surprisingly intellectual. I believe that what we badly need is social approval of learning and social rewards for learning.We can all be members of the intellectual elite and then, and only then, will a phrase like "America's right to know" and, indeed, any true concept of democracy, have any meaning.”
“[Creationists] make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.”
“It is my own experience ... that commentators are far more ingenious at finding meaning than authors are at inserting it.”
“Weisinger, a couple of years ago, made up the following story: "Isaac Asimov was asked how Superman could fly faster than the speed of light, which was supposed to be an absolute limit. To this Asimov replied, 'That the speed of light is a limit is a theory; that Superman can travel faster than light is a fact.'"”
“When you write a short story ... you had better know the ending first. The end of a story is only the end to the reader. To the writer, it's the beginning. If you don't know exactly where you're going every minute you're writing, you'll never get there — or anywhere.”
“Necessity makes a joke of civilization.”
“I make no secret about being Jewish ... I just think it's more important to be human and to have a human heritage; and I think it is wrong for anyone to feel that there is anything special about any one heritage of whatever kind. It is delightful to have the human heritage exist in a thousand varieties, for it makes for greater interest, but as soon as one variety is thought to be more important than another, the groundwork is laid for destroying them all.”
“I am not a visual person. I have spent so many bounded years in my childhood that I have grown used to having books as my window on reality.”
“The fact is that I've never called myself a genius, and I think the term has been cheapened by overuse into meaninglessness. If other people want to call me that, that's their problem.”
“No individual death among human beings is important. Someone who dies leaves his work behind and that does not entirely die. It never entirely dies as long as humanity exists.”
“I joke sometimes to the effect that when I approach a part of a book where I must explain something I don't understand, I just type faster and faster and faster. Then, when I get to the part I don't understand, sheer inertia pushes me through. That's not literally true, of course, but there's something to it psychologically.”
“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'”
“No matter how various the subject matter I write on, I was a science-fiction writer first and it is as a science-fiction writer that I want to be identified.”
“The best way to describe anyone is to give an example of the kind of thing he would do.”
“There are many aspects of the universe that still cannot be explained satisfactorily by science; but ignorance only implies ignorance that may someday be conquered. To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.”
“But suppose we were to teach creationism. What would be the content of the teaching? Merely that a creator formed the universe and all species of life ready-made? Nothing more? No details?”
“Consider the most famous pure dystopian tale of modern times, 1984, by George Orwell (1903-1950), published in 1948 (the same year in which Walden Two was published). I consider it an abominably poor book. It made a big hit (in my opinion) only because it rode the tidal wave of cold war sentiment in the United States.”
“Miniaturization doesn't actually make sense unless you miniaturize the very atoms of which matter is composed. Otherwise a tiny brain in a man the size of an insect, composed of normal atoms, is composed of too few atoms for the miniaturized man to be any more intelligent than the ant. Also, miniaturizing atoms is impossible according to the rules of quantum mechanics.”
“Titles are an important part of a story and I take considerable care in choosing one. In fact, I cannot start a story until I have chosen a title.”
“Once you've dissected a joke, you're about where you are when you've dissected a frog. It's dead.”
“In my fiction I am careful to make everything probable and to tie up all loose ends. Real life is not hampered by such considerations.”
“Science fiction offers its writers chances of embarrassment that no other form of fiction does.”
“There is more to a science fiction story than the science it contains. There is also the story.”
“There are limits beyond which your folly will not carry you. I am glad of that. In fact, I am relieved.”
“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!', but 'That's funny ...'”
“All life is nucleic acid; the rest is commentary”
“I suppose he’s entitled to his opinion, but I don’t suppose it very hard.”
“Science doesn't purvey absolute truth. Science is a mechanism. It's a way of trying to improve your knowledge of nature. It's a system for testing your thoughts against the universe and seeing whether they match. And this works, not just for the ordinary aspects of science, but for all of life. I should think people would want to know that what they know is truly what the universe is like, or at least as close as they can get to it.”
“The Law of conservation of energy tells us we can't get something for nothing, but we refuse to believe it.”
“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
“All mankind, right down to those you most despise, are your neighbors.”
“Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know - and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.”
“I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing — to be clear. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or symbolically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that might (if I were good enough) get me a Pulitzer prize. I would write merely clearly and in this way establish a warm relationship between myself and my readers, and the professional critics — Well, they can do whatever they wish.”
“Radiation, unlike smoking, drinking, and overeating, gives no pleasure, so the possible victims object.”
“And above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning.”
“Books … hold within them the gathered wisdom of humanity, the collected knowledge of the world's thinkers, the amusement and excitement built up by the imaginations of brilliant people. Books contain humor, beauty, wit, emotion, thought, and, indeed, all of life. Life without books is empty.”
“The foundation of all technology is fire.”
“If anyone can be considered the greatest writer who ever lived, it is Shakespeare.”
“Scientific theories can always be improved and are improved. That is one of the glories of science. It is the authoritarian view of the Universe that is frozen in stone and cannot be changed, so that once it is wrong, it is wrong forever.”
“The job of science will never be done, it will just sink deeper and deeper into never-ending complexity.”
“Ideas are cheap. It's only what you do with them that counts.”
“Someone once asked me, "If you had your choice, Dr. Asimov, would it be women or writing?" My answer was, "Well, I can write for twelve hours at a time without getting tired."”
“I was once being interviewed by Barbara Walters...In between two of the segments she asked me..."But what would you do if the doctor gave you only six months to live?" I said, "Type faster." This was widely quoted, but the "six months" was changed to "six minutes," which bothered me. It's "six months."”
“Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”
“If you suspect that my interest in the Bible is going to inspire me with sudden enthusiasm for Judaism and make me a convert of mountain‐moving fervor and that I shall suddenly grow long earlocks and learn Hebrew and go about denouncing the heathen — you little know the effect of the Bible on me. Properly read, it is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”
“I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.”
“A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”
“A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.”
“A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.”
“A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.”
““Fifty years,” I hackneyed, “is a long time.” “Not when you’re looking back at them,” she said. “You wonder how they vanished so quickly.””
“There’s nothing like deduction. We’ve determined everything about our problem but the solution.”
“All sorts of computer errors are now turning up. You'd be surprised to know the number of doctors who claim they are treating pregnant men.”
“I accept nothing on authority. A hypothesis must be backed by reason, or else it is worthless.”
““You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason—if you pick the proper postulates. We have ours and Cutie has his.”Powell sighed wearily. “That’s where everything falls down. Postulates are based on assumptions and adhered to by faith. Nothing in the Universe can shake them. I’m going to bed.””
“The unwritten motto of United States Robot and Mechanical Men Corp. was well-known: “No employee makes the same mistake twice. He is fired the first time.””
“Just you think first, and don’t bother to speak afterward, either.”
“Milton Ashe is not the type to marry a head of hair and a pair of eyes.”
““You’re the U. S. Robot’s psychologist, aren’t you?” “Worlds different.” She allowed herself a frosty smile, “Robots are essentially decent.””
“The machine is only a tool after all, which can help humanity progress faster by taking some of the burdens of calculations and interpretations off its back. The task of the human brain remains what it has always been; that of discovering new data to be analyzed, and of devising new concepts to be tested.”
“There is nothing so eternally adhesive as the memory of power.”
“To the rest of the Galaxy, if they are aware of us at all, Earth is but a pebble in the sky. To us it is home, and all the home we know.”
“It is because you yourself fear the propaganda created, after all, only by the stupidity of your own bigots.”
“There was no denying that he would always be conscious of the fact that an Earthman was an Earthman. He couldn’t help that. That was the result of a childhood immersed in an atmosphere of bigotry so complete that it was almost invisible, so entire that you accepted its axioms as second nature. Then you left it and saw it for what it was when you looked back.”
“If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.”
“That is the most stupid thing yet. I tell you that I could despair of human intelligence when I see what can exist in men’s minds.”
“A planet full of people meant nothing against the dictates of economic necessity!”
“Economics is on the side of humanity now.”
“Q. You do not consider your statement a disloyal one? A. I am.”
“The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity — a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop.”
““That insufferable, dull-witted donkey! That—” Hardin broke in: “Not at all. He’s merely the product of his environment. He doesn’t understand much except that ‘I got a gun and you ain’t.’ ””
“It seems an uncommonly woundabout and hopelessly wigmawolish method of getting anywheahs.”
““Such unsubtle escapism! Really, Dr. Fara, such folly smacks of genius. A lesser mind would be incapable of it."”
““Violence,” came the retort, “is the last refuge of the incompetent.””
“Well, then, arrest him. You can accuse him of something or other afterward.”
““That was the time to begin all-out preparations for war.” “On the contrary. That was the time to begin all-out prevention of war.””
“It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.”
“Courtiers don’t take wagers against the king’s skill. There is the deadly danger of winning.”
“He believes in that mummery a good deal less than I do, and I don’t believe in it at all.”
“For it is the chief characteristic of the religion of science, that it works, and that such curses as that of Aporat’s are really deadly.”
“A fire eater must eat fire even if he has to kindle it himself.”
“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”
““Ponyets! They sent you?” “Pure chance,” said Ponyets, bitterly, “or the work of my own personal malevolent demon.””
“There's something about a pious man such as he. He will cheerfully cut your throat if it suits him, but he will hesitate to endanger the welfare of your immaterial and problematical soul.”
“The whole business is the crudest sort of stratagem, since we have no way of foreseeing it to the end. It is a mere paying out of rope on the chance that somewhere along the length of it will be a noose.”
“He is energetic only in evading responsibility.”
“To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.”
“Korell is that frequent phenomenon in history: the republic whose ruler has every attribute of the absolute monarch but the name. It therefore enjoyed the usual despotism unrestrained even by those two moderating influences in the legitimate monarchies: regal “honor” and court etiquette.”
“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.”
“An atom blaster is a good weapon, but it can point both ways.”
“It’s a poor atom blaster that won’t point both ways.”
“He is a dreamer of ancient times, or rather, of the myths of what ancient times used to be. Such men are harmless in themselves, but their queer lack of realism makes them fools for others.”
“You are a valuable subject, Brodrig. You always suspect far more than is necessary, and I have but to take half your suggested precautions to be utterly safe.”
“Inertia! Our ruling class knows one law; no change. Despotism! They know one rule; force. Maldistribution! They know one desire; to hold what is theirs.”
“To him, a stilted geometric love of arrangement was “system,” an indefatigable and feverish interest in the pettiest facets of day-to-day bureaucracy was “industry,” indecision when right was “caution,” and blind stubbornness when wrong, “determination.””