Isaac Asimov Quotes

Writing is my only interest. Even speaking is an interruption.

Working ten hour days allows you to fall behind twice as fast as you could working five hour days.

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

Goodbye, Hari, my love. Remember always--all you did for me.” -I did nothing for you.” -You loved me and your love made me--human.

The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers.

Custom is second nature. Be accustomed to a bald head, sufficiently accustomed, and hair on it would seem monstrous.

How many people is the earth able to sustain?

Grip the nettle firmly and it will become a stick with which to beat your enemy.

Married life had taught Toran the futility of arguing with a female in a dark-brown mood.

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)

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.

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.

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

Mathematicians deal with large numbers sometimes, but never in their income.

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

Nothing has to be true, but everything has to sound true.

I have never written a book that didn't teach me far more than it taught my reader.

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.

Scientists derive satisfaction from figuring out the puzzle. It's about the quest, not the grail.

There is no merit to discipline under ideal circumstances. I must have it in the face of death or it is worthless.

All life is nucleic acid; the rest is commentary.

Inertia! Our ruling class knows one law; no change. Despotism! They know one rule; force. Maldistribution! They know one desire; to hold what is theirs.

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

It was childish to feel disappointed, but childishness comes almost as naturally to a man as to a child.

Why is it, I wonder, that anyone who displays superior athletic ability is an object of admiration to his classmates, while one who displays superior mental ability is an object of hatred?

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.

Modern science fiction is the only form of literature that consistently considers the nature of the changes that face us.

It has always been my ambition to die in harness with my head face down on a keyboard and my nose caught between two of the keys.

Scientists expect to be improved on and corrected; they hope to be

One thought that occurs to me is that men will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better.

To any who know the star field well from one certain reference point, stars are as individual as people. Jump ten parsecs, however, and not even your own sun is recognizable.

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

Any system which allows men to choose their own future will end by choosing safety and mediocrity, and in such a Reality the stars are out of reach.

It's your fiction that interests me. Your studies of the interplay of human motives and emotion.

Society is much more easily soothed than one's own conscience.

Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.

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

Gratitude is best and most effective when it does not evaporate itself in empty phrases.

Now remember, kids, the internet is serious business.

The important prediction is not the automobile, but the parking problem; not radio, but the soap opera; not the income tax, but the expense account; not the Bomb, but the nuclear stalemate

The greatest inventors are unknown to us. Someone invented the wheel - but who?

I don’t believe in extraordinary concatenations of coincidence.

The downtrodden are more religious than the satisfied.

Happiness is doing it rotten your own way.

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

You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason---if you pick the proper postulates.

All humanity could share a common insanity and be immersed in a common illusion while living in a common chaos. That can't be disproved, but we have no choice but to follow our senses.

They don't want equal time - they want all the time there is.

Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete

Do not forget that a traitor within our ranks, known to us, can do more harm to the enemy than a loyal man can do good to us.