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Isaac Asimov Quotes - Page 6

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

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

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

Writing, Rabbits, Firsts

If there is a category of human being for whom his work ought to speak for itself, it is the writer.

Speak, Categories, Humans

1976 Comment in D L Fitzpatrick (ed) Contemporary Novelists.

True literacy is becoming an arcane art, and the nation is steadily "dumbing down."

Education, Art, Learning

"It's Been a Good Life".

Happiness is doing it rotten your own way.

Rotten, Way

Isaac Asimov (2009). “I, Asimov: A Memoir”, p.399, Bantam

Computerization eliminates the middleman

Middlemen

Now remember, kids, the internet is serious business.

Kids, Serious Business, Remember

To bring about destruction by overcrowding, mass starvation, anarchy, the destruction of our most cherished values, there is no need to do anything. We need only do nothing except what comes naturally, and breed. And how easy it is to do nothing

Population, Needs, Anarchy

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

Intelligence is a valuable thing, but it is not usually the key to survival. Sheer fecundity ... usually counts. The intelligent gorilla doesn't do as well as the less intelligent but more-fecund rat, which doesn't do as well as the still-less-intelligent but still-more-fecund cockroach, which doesn't do as well as the minimally-intelligent but maximally-fecund bacterium.

Intelligent, Keys, Survival

I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing-to be clear. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or symbolically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that might (if I were good enough) get me a Pulitzer prize. I would write merely clearly and in this way establish a warm relationship between myself and my readers, and the professional critics-Well, they can do whatever they wish.

Writing, Long Ago, Mind

"Nemesis". Book by Isaac Asimov. Introduction, 1989.

There is nothing so eternally adhesive as the memory of power.

Memories, Adhesive

Isaac Asimov (1950). “I, Robot”, Roc

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

Writing, Thinking, Fingers

It's humbling to think that all animals, including human beings, are parasites of the plant world.

Animal, Grandchildren, Thinking

If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.

Spiritual, Atheist, Fear

Isaac Asimov (2009). “I, Asimov: A Memoir”, p.481, Bantam

I don’t like anything that’s got to be. I want to know why.

Want, Knows

Isaac Asimov (2011). “The Gods Themselves”, p.90, Spectra

If we only obey those rules that we think are just and reasonable, then no rule will stand, for there is no rule that some will not think is unjust and unreasonable.

Thinking, Unjust, Unreasonable

Isaac Asimov (2012). “Foundation and Earth”, p.77, Spectra

No vision of God and heaven ever experienced by the most exalted prophet can, in my opinion, match the vision of the universe as seen by Newton or Einstein

Heaven, Religion, Vision

Human beings thought with their hands. It was their hands that were the answer of curiosity, that felt and pinched and turned and lifted and hefted. There were animals that had brains of respectable size, but they had no hands and that made all the difference.

Animal, Hands, Differences

Isaac Asimov (2012). “Foundation's Edge”, p.71, Spectra

It is the writer who might catch the imagination of young people, and plant a seed that will flower and come to fruition.

Flower, Writing, Imagination

Isaac Asimov (1987). “Past, Present, and Future”

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.

Work, Writing, Persistence

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.

Lonely, Men, Mind

Isaac Asimov (2010). “Pebble in the Sky”, p.56, Macmillan

Once you get it into your head that somebody is controlling events, you can interpret everything in that light and find no reasonable certainty anywhere.

Light, Events, Certainty

Isaac Asimov (2012). “Foundation's Edge”, p.229, Spectra

Human beings sometimes find a kind of pleasure in nursing painful emotions, in blaming themselves without reason or even against reason.

Life, Nursing, Moved On

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.

Motivational, Future, Continuing On

"My Own View". "The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction". Book edited by Robert Holdstock, 1978.

Only a lie that wasn't ashamed of itself could possibly succeed.

Lying, Succeed, Ashamed

Isaac Asimov (2004). “Second Foundation”, p.96, Spectra

Democracy cannot survive overpopulation.

Democracy, Politics, Overpopulation

Isaac Asimov, Carl Howard Freedman (2005). “Conversations with Isaac Asimov”, p.137, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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