Andre > Andre's Quotes

“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

“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 prevent you from doing what is right.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“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.”
― Jake Negovan

“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, Foundation

“If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.”
― 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, Roving Mind

“We now know the basic rules governing the universe, together with the gravitational interrelationships of its gross components, as shown in the theory of relativity worked out between 1905 and 1916. We also know the basic rules governing the subatomic particles and their interrelationships, since these are very neatly described by the quantum theory worked out between 1900 and 1930. What's more, we have found that the galaxies and clusters of galaxies are the basic units of the physical universe, as discovered between 1920 and 1930.

...The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture 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.

The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that 'right' and 'wrong' are absolute; that everything that isn't perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong.

However, I don't think that's so. It seems to me that right and wrong are fuzzy concepts, and I will devote this essay to an explanation of why I think so.

When my friend the English literature expert tells me that in every century scientists think they have worked out the universe and are always wrong, what I want to know is how wrong are they? Are they always wrong to the same degree?”
― 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