If you could build a small package, something small enough to carry in your coat pocket, a machine which would instantly start and stop, in which you could instantly reverse yourself or go forward, which would require no batteries or other energy sources, and which would provide you with full information on an entire civilization, what would you have? A book!
Isaac Asimov
A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.
Isaac Asimov
And above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning.
Isaac Asimov
Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.
Isaac Asimov
I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.
Isaac Asimov
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
Isaac Asimov
I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.
Isaac Asimov
If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.
Isaac Asimov
If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live, I'd type a little faster.
Isaac Asimov
Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today - but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.
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.
Isaac Asimov
It is not only the living who are killed in war.
Isaac Asimov
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.
Isaac Asimov
It takes more than capital to swing business. You've got to have the A. I. D. degree to get by - Advertising, Initiative, and Dynamics.
Isaac Asimov
Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.
Isaac Asimov
Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put on an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up. Well, maybe once.
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
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Isaac Asimov
Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.
Isaac Asimov
Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.
Isaac Asimov
Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know - and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.
Isaac Asimov
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
Isaac Asimov
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
Isaac Asimov
There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.
Isaac Asimov
To insult someone we call him 'bestial. For deliberate cruelty and nature, 'human' might be the greater insult.