Isaac Asimov
On Earth, we are unmanned by our longing for a pastoral past that never really existed; and that, if it had existed, could never exist again...on the Moon, there is no past to long for or dream about. There is no direction but forward.Collection: Dream
The Tyranni rule fifty worlds; they are outnumbered hundreds to one. In such a position, simple force is insufficient. Devious methods, intrigue, assassination are their specialties. The net they weave across space is a wide one, and close-meshed. I can well believe that it extends across five hundred light-years to Earth.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: Stronger
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.Collection: Law
Every human being lived behind an impenetrable wall of choking mist within which no other but he existed. Occasionally there were the dim signals from deep within the cavern in which another man was located so that each might grope toward the other. Yet because they did not know one another, and could not understand one another, and dared not trust one another, and felt from infancy the terrors and insecurity of that ultimate isolation there was the hunted fear of man for man, the savage rapacity of man toward man.Collection: Wall
I even got a letter from a young woman in British Columbia that began as follows: 'Today I am eighteen. I am sitting at the window, looking out at the rain, and thinking how much I love you.'Collection: Rain
[A]ll knowledge is one. When a light brightens and illuminates a corner of a room, it adds to the general illumination of the entire room. Over and over again, scientific discoveries have provided answers to problems that had no apparent connection with the phenomena that gave rise to the discovery.Collection: Light
A neat and orderly laboratory is unlikely. It is, after all, so much a place of false starts and multiple attempts.Collection: Science
If all human beings understood history, they might cease making the same stupid mistakes over and over.Collection: Mistake
I'm gradually managing to cram my mind more and more full of things. I've got this beautiful mind and it's going to die, and it'll all be gone. And then I say, not in my case. Every idea I've ever had I've written down, and it's all there on paper. And I won't be gone; it'll be there.Collection: Beautiful
It is in meeting the great tests that mankind can most successfully rise to great heights. Out of danger and restless insecurity comes the force that pushes mankind to newer and loftier conquests.Collection: Insecurity
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.Collection: Knowledge
The significant chemicals of living tissue are rickety and unstable, which is exactly what is needed for life.Collection: Life
It’s a poor atom blaster that won’t point both ways.Collection: Atoms
One might accept death reasoningly, with every aspect of the conscious mind, but the body was a brute beast that knew nothing of reason.Collection: Mind
I, on the other hand, am a finished product. I absorb electrical energy directly and utilize it with an almost one hundred percent efficiency. I am composed of strong metal, am continuously conscious, and can stand extremes of environment easily. These are facts which, with the self-evident proposition that no being can create another being superior to itself, smashes your silly hypothesis to nothing.Collection: Strong
When I sit down at the typewriter, I write. Someone once asked me if I had a fixed routine before I start, like setting up exercises, sharpening pencils, or having a drink of orange juice. I said, "No, the only thing I do before I start writing is to make sure that I'm close enough to the typewriter to reach the keys."Collection: Writing
To introduce something altogether new would mean to begin all over, to become ignorant again, and to run the old, old risk of failing to learn.Collection: Running
You see, proteins, as I probably needn't tell you, are immensely complicated groupings of amino acids and certain other specialized compounds, arranged in intricate three-dimensional patterns that are as unstable as sunbeams on a cloudy day. It is this instability that is life, since it is forever changing its position in an effort to maintain its identity--in the manner of a long rod balanced on an acrobat's nose.Collection: Long
I wanted to be a psychological engineer, but we lacked the facilities, so I did the next best thing - I went into politics. It's practically the same thing.Collection: Next
Why this reluctance to make the change? We fear the process of reeducation.Collection: Management
When I feel difficulty coming on, I switch to another book I'm writing. When I get back to the problem, my unconscious has solved it.Collection: Book
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. This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our every man must take on a science fictional way of thinking.Collection: Change
And it came to pass that AC learned how to reverse the direction of entropy. But there was now no man to whom AC might give the answer of the last question. No matter. The answer - by demonstration - would take care of that, too. For another timeless interval, AC thought how best to do this. Carefully, AC organized the program. The consciousness of AC encompassed all of what had been a Universe and brooded over what was now Chaos. Step by step, it must be done. And AC said, "LET THERE BE LIGHT!" And there was light...Collection: Men
It was easy to cover up ignorance by the mystical word "intuition.Collection: Ignorance
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.Collection: Moon
The Three Laws of Robotics: 1: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; 2: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; 3: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law; The Zeroth Law: A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.Collection: Order
Now remember, kids, the internet is serious business.Collection: Kids
Anything you make forbidden gains sexual attractiveness. Would you be particularly interested in women's breasts if you lived in a society in which they were displayed at all times?Collection: Gains
No matter how carefully records are kept and filed and computerized, they grow fuzzy with time. Stories grow by accretion. Tales accumulate--like dust. The longer the time lapse, the dustier the history--until it degenerates into fables.Collection: Dust
The final end of Eternity, and the beginning of InfinityCollection: Finals
All evil is good become cancerous.Collection: Evil
I have never written a book that didn't teach me far more than it taught my reader.Collection: Book
I stand four-square for reason, and object to what seems to me to be irrationality, whatever the source. If you are on my side in this, I must warn you that the army of the night has the advantage of overwhelming numbers, and, by its very nature, is immune to reason, so that it is entirely unlikely that you and I can win out. We will always remain a tiny and probably hopeless minority, but let us never tire of presenting our view, and of fighting the good fight for the right.Collection: Army
Every period of human development has had its own particular type of human conflict---its own variety of problem that, apparently, could be settled only by force. And each time, frustratingly enough, force never really settled the problem. Instead, it persisted through a series of conflicts, then vanished of itself---what's the expression---ah, yes, 'not with a bang, but a whimper,' as the economic and social environment changed. And then, new problems, and a new series of wars.Collection: War
The law of conservation of energy tells us we can't get something for nothing, but we refuse to believe it.Collection: Believe
Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence.Collection: Robots
I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it.Collection: Atheist
Old men tend to forget what thought was like in their youth; they forget the quickness of the mental jump, the daring of the youthful intuition, the agility of the fresh insight. They become accustomed to the more plodding varieties of reason, and because this is more than made up by the accumulation of experience, old men think themselves wiser than the young.Collection: Men
Mathematicians deal with large numbers sometimes, but never in their income.Collection: Math
In my life there have been several individuals whose presence made it easier for me to think, pleasanter to make my responses.Collection: Thinking
It seems to me that God is a convenient invention of the human mindCollection: Mind
There is no more desire to live past one's time than to die before it.Collection: Death
All the suffering that humanity ever knew can be traced to the one fact that no man in the history of the Galaxy ... could really understand one another. Every human being lived behind an impenetrable wall of choking mist within which no other but he existed.Collection: Wall
Words are a pretty fuzzy substitute for mathematical equations.Collection: Mathematical Equations
The world in general disapproves of creativity, and to be creative in public is particularly bad. Even to speculate in public is rather worrisome.Collection: Creativity
Human beings sometimes find a kind of pleasure in nursing painful emotions, in blaming themselves without reason or even against reason.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Dream
The cure for advanced gullibility is to go to sleep and consider matters again the next day.Collection: Sleep