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Isaac Asimov Quotes - Page 16

All Quotes Army Art Atheism Atheist Business Change Children Choices Coincidence Creativity Curiosity Death Democracy Desire Diversity Dying Earth Education Effort Evolution Fear Feelings Fighting Funny Future Giving Heart Heaven History Humanity Ignorance Imagination Insecurity Inspirational Intuition Knowledge Learning Life Literature Love Lying Math Memories Moon Motivational Overpopulation Past Peace Philosophy Prophet Rage Rain Reading Reality Rejection Religion Running School Science Sleep Speed Stupidity Suffering Technology Today Truth Understanding Universe War Winning Wisdom Work Out Writing

This game the Persian Magi did invent, The force of Eastern wisdom to express: From thence to busy Europeans sent, And styled by modern Lombards pensive chess.

This game the Persian Magi did invent, The force of Eastern wisdom to express: From thence to busy Europeans sent, And styled by modern Lombards pensive chess.

Games, Chess, Busy

Self-education is a continuing source of pleasure to me, for the more I know, the fuller my life is and the better I appreciate my own existence

Self, Appreciate, Life Is

Surely, if we take on thinking partners - or, at the least, thinking servants - in the form of machines, we will be more comfortable with them, and will relate to them more easily, if they are shaped like humans. It will be easier to be friends with human-shaped robots than with specialized machines of unrecognizable shape. And I sometimes think that, in the desperate straits of humanity today, we would be grateful to have nonhuman friends, even if they are only the friends we build ourselves.

Grateful, Thinking, Humanity

Speech as known to us was unnecessary. A fragment of a sentence amounted almost to a long-winded redundancy. A gesture, a grunt, the curve of a facial line--even a significantly timed pause yielded informational juice.

Curves, Long, Juice

Isaac Asimov (2004). “Second Foundation”, p.19, Spectra

In theory, there is nothing the computer can do that the human mind can not do. The computer merely takes a finite amount of data and performs a finite number of operations upon them. The human mind can duplicate the process

Finite Number, Data, Numbers

Isaac Asimov (1990). “The Complete Stories”, Broadway Books

With both people and computers on the job, computer error can be more quickly tracked down and corrected by people and, conversely, human error can be more quickly corrected by computers. What it amounts to is that nothing serious can happen unless human error and computer error take place simultaneously. And that hardly ever happens.

Jobs, Errors, People

Never judge your own writing. You're not fit to do so.

Writing, Judging, Fit

Isaac Asimov (1995). “Yours, Isaac Asimov: A Lifetime of Letters”, Doubleday Books

The dangers that face the world can, every one of them, be traced back to science. The salvations that may save the world will, every one of them, be traced back to science.

Science, World, May

Plate glass... has no beauty of its own. Ideally, you ought not to be able to see it at all, but through it you can see all that is happening outside. That is the equivalent of writing that is plain and unadorned. Ideally, in reading such writing, you are not even aware that you are reading. Ideas and events seem merely to flow from the mind of the writer into that of the reader without any barrier between. I hope that is what is happening when you read this book

Book, Reading, Writing

I never considered myself a patriot. I like to think I recognize only humanity as my nation.

Thinking, Humanity, Patriotism

Isaac Asimov (2012). “Foundation's Edge”, p.245, Spectra

Experimentation is the least arrogant method of gaining knowledge. The experimenter humbly asks a question of nature.

Knowledge, Science, Arrogance

All of a sudden, space isn't friendly. All of a sudden, it's a place where people can die. . . . Many more people are going to die. But we can't explore space if the requirement is that there be no casualties; we can't do anything if the requirement is that there be no casualties.

Space, People, Safety

Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil-but there is no way around them.

Writing, Rejection, Soul

I'm an indoors person. I'm not afraid of the outdoors and I penetrate it easily and cheerfully. However, I must admit I like Central Park better than the wilderness, and I like the canyons of Manhattan better than Central Park, and I like the interior of my apartment better than the canyons of Manhattan, and I like my two rooms better with the shades down at all times than with the shades up. I'm not an agoraphobe at all, but I am a claustrophile, if you see the distinction.

Central Park, Two, Parks

The history of science is full of revolutionary advances that required small insights that anyone might have had, but that, in fact, only one person did.

Might, Facts, Revolutionary

"The Three Numbers". Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, September 1974.

Before another century is done it will be hard for people to imagine a time when humanity was confined to one world, and it will seem to them incredible that there was ever anybody who doubted the value of space and wanted to turn his or her back on the Universe.

Future, Science, Space

The peace and joy of the Christmas season was marred by a proclamation of a general strike of all the military forces of the world. Panic reigns in the hearts of all the patriots of every persuasion. Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time low over the world.

Peace, Fear, Military

Unfortunately, in many cases, people who write science fiction violate the laws of nature, not because they want to make a point, but because they don't know what the laws of nature are.

Writing, Knowledge, Science

Isaac Asimov, Carl Howard Freedman (2005). “Conversations with Isaac Asimov”, p.176, Univ. Press of Mississippi

There is no right to deny freedom to any object with a mind advanced enough to grasp the concept and desire the state. -(from "The Bicentennial Man) story)

Men, Mind, Desire

The temptation was great to muster what force we could and put up a fight. It's the easiest way out, and the most satisfactory to self-respect--but, nearly invariably, the stupidest.

Fighting, Self, Temptation

Isaac Asimov (1986). “Foundation Trilogy”, Del Rey

Fifty years," I hackneyed, "is a long time." "Not when you're looking back at them," she said. "You wonder how they vanished so quickly.

Years, Long, Fifty

Isaac Asimov (1950). “I, Robot”, Roc

There are many aspects of the universe that still cannot be explained satisfactorily by science; but ignorance implies only ignorance that may someday be conquered. To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

Ignorance, May, Today

"The 'Threat' Of Creationism" by Isaac Asimov, www.nytimes.com. June 14, 1981.

I don't expect to live forever, nor do I repine over that, but I am weak enough to want to be remembered forever. - Yet how few of those who have lived, even of those who have accomplished far more than I have, linger on in world memory for even a single century after death

Memories, Forever, World

Isaac Asimov (2002). “It's Been a Good Life”, Pyr Books

People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. They are far too ready to dismiss it and to build arcane structures of extremely rickety substance in order to avoid it. I, on the other hand, see coincidence everywhere as an inevitable consequence of the laws of probability, according to which having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be.

Science, Hands, Order

Isaac Asimov (1976). “The planet that wasn't”, Doubleday Books

Science is complex and chilling. The mathematical language of science is understood by very few. The vistas it presents are scary-an enormous universe ruled by chance and impersonal rules, empty and uncaring, ungraspable and vertiginous. How comfortable to turn instead to a small world, only a few thousand years old, and under God's personal; and immediate care; a world in which you are His peculiar concern.

God, Science, Years

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