Isaac Asimov quotes - page 15

Isaac Asimov was a Russian-born American writer and professor, renowned for his works of science fiction and popular science. A prolific author, he wrote or edited more than 500 books across a wide range of subjects. He became especially famous for his "Foundation" and "Robot" series, and is celebrated as one of the greatest science fiction writers in history. Here are 363 of his quotes:

Goodbye, friend Elijiah, and remember that, although people apply the phrase to Aurora, it is, from this point on, Earth itself that is the true World of the Dawn.

Isaac Asimov

Nonsense. You are a military man and should know better. If there is one science into which man has probed continuously and successfully, it is that of military technology. No potential weapon would remain unrealized for ten thousand years.

Isaac Asimov

Gillbret said, "Statistics show that one out of three stars has a planetary system.” Biron nodded. It was a well-worn statistic. Every child was taught that in elementary Galactography.

Isaac Asimov

First, there must be an end to war and national rivalry and only then could one turn to the internal miseries that, after all, had external conflict as their chief cause.

Isaac Asimov

Junz found revulsion growing strong within him. A planet full of people meant nothing against the dictates of economic necessity!

Isaac Asimov

Chapter 6 "One Man, the Mule - And Another", the First Speaker to the Mule.

Isaac Asimov

Now the plan was threatend by something more serious than the Mule had ever been. It was to be diverted from a renewal of Empire to something utterly different from anything in history - Galaxia. And he himself had agreed to that. But why? Was there a flaw in the plan? a basic flaw? For one flashing moment, it seemed to Trevize that this flaw did indeed exist and that he knew what it was, that he had known what it was when he made his decision - but the knowledge...if that were what it was...vanished as fast as it came, and left him with nothing.

Isaac Asimov

For ten years the Galactic Empire had been without an Emperor, but there was no indication of that fact in the way the Imperial Palace grounds were operated. Millennia of custom made the absence of an Emperor meaningless.

Isaac Asimov

Confidence is rewarded, apparently. There was a homewhen proverb that went, "Grip the nettle firmly and it will become a stick with which to beat your enemy."

Isaac Asimov

Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? - in ancient astronauts? - in the Bermuda triangle? - in life after death? No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no. One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?" "Yes", I said. "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

If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul. I would also want a God who would not allow a Hell. Infinite torture can only be a punishment for infinite evil, and I don't believe that infinite evil can be said to exist even in the case of Hitler. Besides, if most human governments are civilized enough to try to eliminate torture and outlaw cruel and unusual punishments, can we expect anything less of an all-merciful God? I feel that if there were an afterlife, punishment for evil would be reasonable and of a fixed term. And I feel that the longest and worst punishment should be reserved for those who slandered God by inventing Hell.

Isaac Asimov