Isaac Asimov

“There is no right to deny freedom to any object with a mind advanced enough to grasp the concept and desire the state.”

“There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere. ”

“Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.”

“The age of the pulp magazine was the last in which youngsters, to get their primitive material, were forced to be literate.”

“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”

“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.”

“I am trying now to re-create in my mind the picture of the man as I saw him in 1939- he, the revered author of Sinister Barriers, I the novice. I think I can rely on my near-photographic memory for the purpose. (I call it "near-photographic" because I can only remember things that happen to be lying around near photographs.)Let's see, as I recall, he is six-feet seven-inches tall (when he is sitting down, that is) with a long and majestic English face. Then, too, I distinctly remember, there was a small flashing golden aura about his head, the occasional play of hissing flashes when he moved it suddenly, and the distant rumble of thunder when he spoke.”

“La violence est le dernier refuge de l'incompétence.”

“The human mind works at low efficiency. Twenty percent is the figure usually given. When, momentarily, there is a flash of greater power, it is termed a hunch, or insight, or intuition.”

“Married life had taught him the futility of arguing with a female in a dark-brown mood.”

“Society is much more easily soothed than one's own conscience.”

“The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of physics, and if the probabilities of error are greater, it is only because history does not deal with as many humans as physics does atoms, so that individual variations count for more.”

“There's probably no one so easily bribed, but he lacks even the fundamental honesty of honorable corruption. He doesn't stay bribed; not for any sum.”

“Writing is a lonely job. Even if a writer socializes regularly, when he gets down to the real business of his life, it is he and his type writer or word processor. No one else is or can be involved in the matter.”

“Surely, if we take on thinking partners––or, at the least, thinking servants––in the form of machines, we will be more comfortable with them, and will relate to them more easily, if they are shaped like humans. It will be easier to be friends with human-shaped robots than with specialized machines of unrecognizable shape. And I sometimes think that, in the desperate straits of humanity today, we would be grateful to have nonhuman friends, even if they are only the friends we build ourselves.”

“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 ”

“I am frequently asked if I have visited Israel, whereas yet, it is simply assumed that I have. Well, I don’t travel. I really don’t, and if I did, I probably wouldn’t visit Israel. I remember how it was in 1948 when Israel was being established and all my Jewish friends were ecstatic, I was not. I said: what are we doing? We are establishing ourselves in a ghetto, in a small corner of a vast Muslim sea. The Muslims will never forget nor forgive, and Israel, as long as it exists, will be embattled. I was laughed at, but I was right. I can’t help but feel that the Jews didn’t really have the right to appropriate a territory only because 2000 years ago, people they consider their ancestors, were living there. History moves on and you can’t really turn it back. (#92 ff.)”

“I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.”

“And it came to pass that AC learned how to reverse the direction of entropy. But there was now no man to whom AC might give the answer of the last question. No matter. The answer--by demonstration--would take care of that, too. For another timeless interval, AC thought how best to do this. Carefully, AC organized the program.The consciousness of AC encompassed all of what had been a Universe and brooded over what was now Chaos. Step by step, it must be done.And AC said, "LET THERE BE LIGHT!"And there was light--”

“Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.”

“Once, when a religionist denounced me in unmeasured terms, I sent him a card saying, "I am sure you believe that I will go to hell when I die, and that once there I will suffer all the pains and tortures the sadistic ingenuity of your deity can devise and that this torture will continue forever. Isn't that enough for you? Do you have to call me bad names in addition?”

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

“The Three Laws of Robotics:1: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm;2: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law;3: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law;The Zeroth Law: A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.”

“An atom-blaster is a good weapon, but it can point both ways.”

“Gewalt ist die letzte Zuflucht des Unfähigen.”

“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. ”

“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”

“The Earth should not be cut up into hundreds of different sections, each inhabited by a self-defined segment of humanity that considers its own welfare and its own "national security" to be paramount above all other consideration.I am all for cultural diversity and would be willing to see each recognizable group value its cultural heritage. I am a New York patriot, for instance, and if I lived in Los Angeles, I would love to get together with other New York expatriates and sing "Give My Regards to Broadway."This sort of thing, however, should remain cultural and benign. I'm against it if it means that each group despises others and lusts to wipe them out. I'm against arming each little self-defined group with weapons with which to enforce its own prides and prejudices.The Earth faces environmental problems right now that threaten the imminent destruction of civilization and the end of the planet as a livable world. Humanity cannot afford to waste its financial and emotional resources on endless, meaningless quarrels between each group and all others. there must be a sense of globalism in which the world unites to solve the real problems that face all groups alike.Can that be done? The question is equivalent to: Can humanity survive?I am not a Zionist, then, because I don't believe in nations, and because Zionism merely sets up one more nation to trouble the world. It sets up one more nation to have "rights" and "demands" and "national security" and to feel it must guard itself against its neighbors.There are no nations! There is only humanity. And if we don't come to understand that right soon, there will be no nations, because there will be no humanity. ”

“Intelligence is an accident of evolution, and not necessarily an advantage.”

“Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.”

“I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.”

“I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.”

“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.'”

“There is no merit to discipline under ideal circumstances. I must have it in the face of death or it is worthless.”

“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.”

“But life is glorious when it is happy; days are carefree when they are happy; the interplay of thought and imagination is far superior to that of muscle and sinew. Let me tell you, if you don't know it from your own experience, that reading a good book, losing yourself in the interest of words and thoughts, is for some people (me, for instance) an incredible intensity of happiness.”

“To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.”

“We're forever teetering on the brink of the unknowable, and trying to understand what can't be understood.”

“They don't want equal time - they want all the time there is.”

“All right, Schwartz, tackle my mind now. Go as deep as you want. I was born on Baronn in the Sirius Sector. I lived my life in an atmosphere of anti-Terrestrialism in the formative years, so I can't help what flaws and follies lie at the roots of my subconscious. But look on the surface and tell me if, in my adult years, I have not fought bigotry in myself. Not in others; that would be easy. But in myself, and as hard as I could.”

“They won't listen. Do you know why? Because they have certain fixed notions about the past. Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don't want the truth; they want their traditions.”

“One might accept death reasoningly, with every aspect of the conscious mind, but the body was a brute beast that knew nothing of reason.”

“Earthmen may even rule at Trantor for a generation, but their children will become Trantorians, and in their turn will look down upon the remnant on Earth.”

“Give us but the chance and a new generation of Earthmen would grow to maturity, lacking insularity and believing wholeheartedly in the oneness of Man.”

“Of course there are worlds. Millions of them! Every star you see has worlds, and most of those you don't see.”

“Any planet is 'Earth' to those that live on it.”

“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.”

“Do not forget that a traitor within our ranks, known to us, can do more harm to the enemy than a loyal man can do good to us.”

“It was obvious that bigotry was never a one-way operation, that hatred bred hatred!”