The Best Isaac Asimov quotes

Man’s greatest asset is the unsettled mind. — Isaac Asimov

Finished products are for decadent minds. — Isaac Asimov

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. — Isaac Asimov

The greatest weapons in the conquest of knowledge are an understanding mind and the inexorable curiosity that drives it on. — Isaac Asimov

I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing–to be clear. — Isaac Asimov

In the presence of total Darkness, the mind finds it absolutely necessary to create light. — Isaac Asimov

One might accept death reasoningly, with every aspect of the conscious mind, but the body was a brute beast that knew nothing of reason. — Isaac Asimov

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) — Isaac Asimov

Intuition is the art, peculiar to the human mind, of working out the correct answer from data that is, in itself, incomplete or even, perhaps, misleading. — Isaac Asimov

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome. — Isaac Asimov

Life originated in the sea, and about eighty percent of it is still there. — Isaac Asimov

In life, people will take you at your own reckoning. — Isaac Asimov

While he lives, he must think; while he thinks, he must dream. — 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

Religion is more conservative than any other aspect of human life. — Isaac Asimov

All normal life, Peter, consciously or otherwise, resent domination. If the domination is by an inferior, or by a supposed inferior, the resentment becomes stronger. — Isaac Asimov

The significant chemicals of living tissue are rickety and unstable, which is exactly what is needed for life. — 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

In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate. — Isaac Asimov

Was there anything more exciting in life than seeking answers? — Isaac Asimov

It is always useful, you see, to subject the past life of reform politicians to rather inquisitive research. — Isaac Asimov

All life is nucleic acid; the rest is commentary. — Isaac Asimov

Married life had taught Toran the futility of arguing with a female in a dark–brown mood. — Isaac Asimov

It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly. — Isaac Asimov

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. — Isaac Asimov

Love life seems to be that factor which requires the largest quantity of magical tinkering. — Isaac Asimov

Life is a journey, but don’t worry, you’ll find a parking spot at the end. — Isaac Asimov

Life is glorious when it is happy; days are carefree when they are happy; the interplay of thought and imagination is far superior to that of muscle and sinew. — Isaac Asimov

Why … did so many people spend their lives not trying to find answers to questions––not even thinking of questions to begin with? Was there anything more exciting in life than seeking answers? — Isaac Asimov

Suppose we were to teach creationism. What would be the content of the teaching? Merely that a creator formed the universe and all species of life ready–made? Nothing more? No details? — Isaac Asimov

To those who are trained in science, creationism seems a bad dream, a sudden coming back to life of a nightmare, a renewed march of an Army of the Night risen to challenge free thought and enlightenment. — Isaac Asimov

Today’s science fiction is tomorrow’s science fact. — Isaac Asimov

Arthur Clarke says that I am first in science and second in science fiction in accordance with an agreement we have made. I say he is first in science fiction and second in science. — Isaac Asimov

A scientist is as weak and human as any man, but the pursuit of science may ennoble him even against his will. — Isaac Asimov

There is an art to science, and a science in art; the two are not enemies, but different aspects of the whole. — Isaac Asimov

There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere. — Isaac Asimov

That’s the harm of Close Encounters: that it convinces tens of millions that that’s what just science fiction is. — Isaac Asimov

There is not a discovery in science, however revolutionary, however sparkling with insight, that does not arise out of what went before. — Isaac Asimov

God, how that stings! I’ve spent a lifetime loving science fiction and now I find that you must expect nothing of something that’s just science fiction. — Isaac Asimov

O]ur statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking. — Isaac Asimov

Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not. — Isaac Asimov

It is precisely because it is fashionable for Americans to know no science, even though they may be well educated otherwise, that they so easily fall prey to nonsense. — Isaac Asimov

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. — Isaac Asimov

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it!) but ‘That’s funny…’ — Isaac Asimov

Science doesn’t purvey absolute truth. Science is a mechanism… for testing your thoughts against the universe. — Isaac Asimov

It is the nature of science that answers automatically pose new and more subtle questions. — Isaac Asimov

I consider one of the most important duties of any scientist the teaching of science to students and to the general public. — Isaac Asimov

Science does not promise absolute truth, nor does it consider that such a thing necessarily exists. Science does not even promise that everything in the Universe is amenable to the scientific process. — Isaac Asimov

It is remarkable, Hardin, how the religion of science has grabbed hold. — Isaac Asimov

Science is a set of rules to keep us from telling lies to each other. All scientists really have is a reputation for telling the truth. — Isaac Asimov

It is the chief characteristic of the religion of science that it works. — Isaac Asimov

Social] science fiction is that branch of literature which is concerned with the impact of scientific advance on human beings. — Isaac Asimov

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. — Isaac Asimov

They don’t want equal time–they want all the time there is. — Isaac Asimov

Emotionally I am an atheist. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time. — Isaac Asimov

Night will always be a time of fear and insecurity, and the heart will sink with the sun. — Isaac Asimov

There is no more desire to live past one’s time than to die before it. — 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

Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all time low over the world. — Isaac Asimov

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. — Isaac Asimov

It is the invariable lesson to humanity that distance in time, and in space as well, lends focus. It is not recorded, incidentally, that the lesson has ever been permanently learned. — Isaac Asimov

Scientific apparatus offers a window to knowledge, but as they grow more elaborate, scientists spend ever more time washing the windows. — Isaac Asimov

I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. — Isaac Asimov

You just can’t differentiate between a robot and the very best of humans. — Isaac Asimov

A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. — Isaac Asimov

The human brain, then, is the most complicated organization of matter that we know. — Isaac Asimov

It’s your fiction that interests me. Your studies of the interplay of human motives and emotion. — Isaac Asimov

I can’t bear to hear a human being spoken of with contempt just because of his group identification…It’s these respectable people here who create those hooligans out there. — Isaac Asimov

The Master created humans first as the lowest type, most easily formed. Gradually, he replaced them by robots, the next higher step, and finally he created me, to take the place of the last humans. — Isaac Asimov

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

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

We are all victimized by the natural perversity of inanimate objects…and the assorted human beings who perpetuate and maintain this perversity. — Isaac Asimov

Considering what human beings do and have done to human beings (and to other living things as well) … I can never imagine what the devil people think computers can add to the horrors. — Isaac Asimov

In the world of today can there be peace anywhere until there is peace everywhere? — Isaac Asimov

The world in general disapproves of creativity, and to be creative in public is particularly bad. Even to speculate in public is rather worrisome. — Isaac Asimov

The whole world might know you and acclaim you, but someone in the past, forever unreachable, forever unknowing, spoils it all. — Isaac Asimov

Of course there are worlds. Millions of them! Every star you see has worlds, and most of those you don’t see. — Isaac Asimov

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. — Isaac Asimov

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in. — Isaac Asimov

B]egin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while or the light won’t come in. — Alan Alda

Where is the world whose people don’t prefer a comfortable, warm, and well–worn belief, however illogical, to the chilly winds of uncertainty. — Isaac Asimov

Increasingly, our leaders must deal with dangers that threaten the entire world, where an understanding of those dangers and the possible solutions depends on a good grasp of science. — Isaac Asimov

John Dalton’s records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war. — Isaac Asimov

The world of A.D. 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot be done better by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders. — Isaac Asimov

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’s humbling to think that all animals, including human beings, are parasites of the plant world. — Isaac Asimov

The world is being Americanized and technologized to its limits, and that makes it dull for some people. Reaching the Moon restores the frontier and gives us the lands beyond. — Isaac Asimov

To make discoveries, you have to be curious about why the universe is the way it is. — Isaac Asimov

Ten years on the moon could tell us more about the universe than a thousand years on the earth might be able to. — Isaac Asimov

And in man is a three–pound brain which, as far as we know, is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter in the universe. — Isaac Asimov

So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You’d better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can’t rearrange the universe. — Isaac Asimov

Though knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them. — Isaac Asimov

Uncertainty that comes from knowledge (knowing what you don’t know) is different from uncertainty coming from ignorance. — Isaac Asimov

During the century after Newton, it was still possible for a man of unusual attainments to master all fields of scientific knowledge. But by 1800, this had become entirely impracticable. — Isaac Asimov

Aimless extension of knowledge, however, which is what I think you really mean by the term curiosity, is merely inefficiency. I am designed to avoid inefficiency. — R. Daneel Olivaw

Even as a youngster, though, I could not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presented danger, the solution was ignorance. — Isaac Asimov

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