"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

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

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

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."
— Isaac Asimov

"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived."
— 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

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

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

"Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night."
— Isaac Asimov

"Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right."
— 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

"Tell me why the stars do shine,
Tell me why the ivy twines,
Tell me what makes skies so blue,
And I'll tell you why I love you.

Nuclear fusion makes stars to shine,
Tropisms make the ivy twine,
Raleigh scattering make skies so blue,
Testicular hormones are why I love you. "
— Isaac Asimov

"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.'"
— Isaac Asimov

"I write for the same reason I breathe ... because if I didn't, I would die."
— Isaac Asimov

"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

"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

"I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it. Now, when I read constantly about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that the door is closing and that American society has found one more way to destroy itself."
— Isaac Asimov (I, Asimov: A Memoir)

"Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do."
— Isaac Asimov

"To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today."
— Isaac Asimov

"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."
— Isaac Asimov (Pebble in the Sky)

"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?"
— Isaac Asimov (I, Asimov: A Memoir)

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

"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. "
— Isaac Asimov (I, Asimov: A Memoir)

"It is the obvious which is so difficult to see most of the time. People say 'It's as plain as the nose on your face.' But how much of the nose on your face can you see, unless someone holds a mirror up to you?"
— Isaac Asimov (I, Robot)

"But life is glorious when it is happy; days are carefree when they are happy; the interplay of thought and imagination is far and 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."
— Isaac Asimov (I, Asimov: A Memoir)

"I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander."
— Isaac Asimov

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

"Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly."
— Isaac Asimov

"Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is. "
— Isaac Asimov

"Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest."
— Isaac Asimov

"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)

"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

"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."
— Isaac Asimov (Asimov on Science Fiction)

"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)

"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

"We're forever teetering on the brink of the unknowable, and trying to understand what can't be understood."
— Isaac Asimov (The Caves of Steel)

"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)

"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."
— Isaac Asimov

"There is nothing frightening about an eternal dreamless sleep. Surely it is better than eternal torment in Hell and eternal boredom in Heaven."
— Isaac Asimov

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

"Intelligence is an accident of evolution, and not necessarily an advantage."
— Isaac Asimov

"You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason---if you pick the proper postulates."
— Isaac Asimov (I, Robot)

"There never can be a man so lost as one who is lost in the vast and intricate corridors of his own lonely mind, where none may reach and none may save."
— Isaac Asimov (Pebble in the Sky)

"All normal life, Peter, consciously or otherwise, resent domination. If the domination is by an inferior, or by a supposed inferior, the resentment becomes stronger."
— Isaac Asimov (I, Robot)

"Postulates are based on assumption and adhered to by faith. Nothing in the Universe can shake them."
— Isaac Asimov (I, Robot)

"Any planet is 'Earth' to those that live on it."
— Isaac Asimov (Pebble in the Sky)

"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)