The Gods Themselves

by Isaac Asimov

He started blindly but within a month he had that feeling that every scientist recognizes—the endless click-click as unexpected pieces fall into place, as annoying anomalies become anomalous no more—It was the feel of Truth.

“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.

“Schiller. A German dramatist of three centuries ago. In a play about Joan of Arc, he said, ‘Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.’

“All they have to do is refuse to believe it means death. The easiest way to solve a problem is to deny it exists.

At the age of twenty-five I was still such a child that I had to amuse myself by insulting a fool for no reason other than that he was a fool. Since his folly was not his fault, I was the greater fool to do it.

In any case, there are no happy endings in history, only crisis points that pass.

To mankind, and the hope that the war against folly may someday be won after all.