quotes by Isaac Asimov

"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. "
— Isaac Asimov

"If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster."
— Isaac Asimov

"While he lives, he must think; while he thinks, he must dream."
— Isaac Asimov

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. "
— Isaac Asimov

"You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.

"
— Isaac Asimov

"If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them."
— Isaac Asimov

"The young specialist in English Lit, ...lectured me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong.

... My answer to him was, "... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." "
— Isaac Asimov

"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."
— Isaac Asimov

"The first step in making rabbit stew is catching the rabbit."
— Isaac Asimov

"If I am right, then (religious fundamentalists) will not go to Heaven, because there is no Heaven. If they are right, then they will not go to Heaven, because they are hypocrites."
— Isaac Asimov

"All evil is good become cancerous."
— Isaac Asimov

""If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them" "
— Isaac Asimov

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" [I found it!] but "That's funny . . . ""
— Isaac Asimov

"Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death?
No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.
One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?"
"Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be." "
— Isaac Asimov

"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."
— Isaac Asimov

"Author's Notes: This story starts with section 6. This is not a mistake. I have my own subtle reasoning. So, just read, and enjoy."
— Isaac Asimov (The Gods Themselves)

"I prefer rationalism to atheism. The question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism, thus you don't have to waste your time in either attacking or defending."
— Isaac Asimov

"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

"To a thoughtful biographer, [Ebling Mis's house] was "the symbolization of a retreat from a non-academic reality", a society columnist gushed silkily at its "frightfully masculine atmosphere of careless disorder", a University Ph.D called it brusquely, "bookish, but unorganized", a non-university friend said, "good for a drink anytime and you can put your feet on the sofa", and a breezy newsweekly broadcast, that went in for color, spoke of the "rooky, down-to-earth, no-nonsense living quarters of blaspheming, Leftish, balding Ebling Mis".

To Bayta, who thought of no audience but herself at the moment, and who had the advantage of first-hand information, it was merely sloppy."
— Isaac Asimov (Foundation and Empire)

"And [Asimov]'ll sign anything, hardbacks, softbacks, other people's books, scraps of paper. Inevitably someone handed him a blank check on the occasion when I was there, and he signed that without as much as a waver to his smile — except that he signed: 'Harlan Ellison.'"
— Isaac Asimov (Murder at the ABA)