Isaac Asimov Quotes

People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.

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

When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent.

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.

In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.

People think of education as something that they can finish.

There are no nations! There is only humanity. And if we don't come to understand that right soon, there will be no nations, because there will be no humanity.

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

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

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

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

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

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'

The day you stop learning is the day you begin decaying.

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.

Maybe happiness is this: not feeling like you should be elsewhere, doing something else, being someone else.

Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.

Uncertainty that comes from knowledge (knowing what you don't know) is different from uncertainty coming from ignorance.

All you have to do is take a close look at yourself and you will understand everyone else.

It is not only the living who are killed in war.

The easiest way to solve a problem is to deny it exists.

Since emotions are few and reasons are many (said the robot Giscard) the behavior of a crowd can be more easily predicted than the behavior of one person.

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.

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.

The intelligent man is never bored.

If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is. The only function of a school is to make self-education easier; failing that, it does nothing.

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.

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

To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

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

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.

Democracy cannot survive overpopulation.

The cure for advanced gullibility is to go to sleep and consider matters again the next day.

My feeling is, quite simply, that if there is a God, He has done such a bad job that he isn't worth discussing.

Any teacher that can be replaced by a computer should be replaced by a computer.

There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.

The advance of genetic engineering makes it quite conceivable that we will begin to design our own evolutionary progress.

Any book worth banning is a book worth reading.

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

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

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.

Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.

There are no happy endings in history, only crisis points that pass.

The great secret of the successful fool is that he's no fool at all

It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong.

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.