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

"We're all born strangers to ourselves and each other, and we're seldom formally introduced."
— Robert Charles Wilson (Spin)

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

"So you want a knife, a nice sharp knife. You hone that blade to its limits. It even cuts through stone when you want it to. It saves your life. And then you're outraged when it cuts you accidentally. You see, knives don't switch off. And neither do people, not when you hone them to a fine edge."
— Karen Traviss

"I won't put my ignorance on an altar and call it God. It feels like idolatry, like the worst kind of idolatry."
— Robert Charles Wilson (Darwinia: A Novel of a Very Different Twentieth Century)

"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

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

"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

"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

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

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

"Nowhere does it say free speech is carte blanche to be a jerk. And don't cheapen real free speech by hijacking an honourable concept bought dearly with people's lives just to get a little spotlight. Spotlights run hot, and they can burn."
— Karen Traviss

"And nobody has the right to judge a soldier from the warmth and safety of their armchair."
— Karen Traviss

"If you take a shot at someone, you keep firing until they can no longer return fire. Wound them, and you have an angry enemy who knows your position."
— Karen Traviss

"A basic principle upon which I’ve learned to live my life is that I should never be surprised at people’s ability to disappoint me."
— Rudy Ruiz

"The secret message communicated to most young people today by the society around them is that they are not needed, that the society will run itself quite nicely until they - at some distant point in the future - will take over the reigns. Yet the fact is that the society is not running itself nicely... because the rest of us need all the energy, brains, imagination and talent that young people can bring to bear down on our difficulties. For society to attempt to solve its desperate problems without the full participation of even very young people is imbecile."
— Alvin Toffler

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. "
— Alvin Toffler

"If you don't have a strategy, you're part of someone else's strategy. "
— Alvin Toffler

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

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

"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)

"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)

"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)

"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

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

"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)

"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)

"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

"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)

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
— Dr. Seuss

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."
— Dr. Seuss

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
— Albert Einstein

"Be the change that you wish to see in the world."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."
— Maya Angelou

"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams."
— Dr. Seuss

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
— Mark Twain

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."
— Marilyn Monroe

"Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend."
— Albert Camus