Isaac Asimov Quotes - Page 11

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• If I had felt then as I feel now, or as I felt a few years after I had married her, nothing could possibly have persuaded me to marry a woman who smoked. Dates, yes. Sexual adventures, yes. But to pin myself permanently inside closed quarters with a smoker? Never. Never. Never. Beauty wouldn't count, sweetness wouldn't count, suitability in every other respect wouldn't count.

  Isaac Asimov

  Adventure, Years, Smoking

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• And [Asimov]'ll sign anything, hardbacks, softbacks, other people's books, scraps of paper. Inevitably someone handed him a blank check on the occasion when I was there, and he signed that without as much as a waver to his smile — except that he signed: 'Harlan Ellison.

  Isaac Asimov

  Book, People, Paper

  Isaac Asimov (1976). “Murder at the ABA: A Puzzle in Four Days and Sixty Scenes”

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

  Isaac Asimov

  Want, Equal

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• It was obvious that bigotry was never a one-way operation, that hatred bred hatred!

  Isaac Asimov

  Racism, Hatred, Way

  Isaac Asimov (2010). “Pebble in the Sky”, p.71, Macmillan

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• The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity — a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop.

  Isaac Asimov

  Fall, Gentleman, Curiosity

  Isaac Asimov (1986). “Foundation Trilogy”, Del Rey

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• A good question is, of course, the key by which infinite answers can be educed.

  Isaac Asimov

  Inspirational, Wise, Wisdom

  Isaac Asimov (2012). “Foundation's Edge”, p.259, Spectra

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• People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence.

  Isaac Asimov

  People, Coincidence, Arcane

  Isaac Asimov (1976). “The planet that wasn't”, Doubleday Books

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• My feeling is that as far as creativity is concerned, isolation is required. Creation is embarrassing. For every new good idea you have, there are a hundred, ten thousand foolish ones.

  Isaac Asimov

  Creativity, Ideas, Feelings

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

  Isaac Asimov

  Wheels, Inventor

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• It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.

  Isaac Asimov

  Exercise, Civilization, Privacy

  Isaac Asimov (2012). “Foundation's Edge”, p.106, Spectra

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

  Isaac Asimov

  Foundation, Pay, Reputation

  Isaac Asimov (1951). “The foundation trilogy: three classics of science fiction”

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• Naturally, since [the Sumerians] didn't know what caused the flood anymore than we do, they blamed the gods. (That's the advantage of religion. You're never short an explanation for anything.)

  Isaac Asimov

  Fear, Atheism, Rage

  Isaac Asimov (1989). “The Tyrannosaurus Prescription and 100 Other Essays”

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

  Isaac Asimov

  Science, Men, May

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• How many people is the earth able to sustain?

  Isaac Asimov

  People, Earth, Able

  1971 Der Spiegel.

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• The young specialist in English Lit, ...lectured me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong.

  Isaac Asimov

  People, Lasts, Facts

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

  Isaac Asimov

  Discipline, Faces, Merit

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• 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

  War, Records, World

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• All roads lead to Trantor, says the old proverb, and that is where all stars end.

  Isaac Asimov

  Stars, Ends, All Stars

  "Second Foundation".

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

  Isaac Asimov

  Impact, Fiction, Literature

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• It's not so much what you have to learn if you accept weird theories, it's what you have to UNlearn.

  Isaac Asimov

  Learning, Accepting, Theory

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• Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.

  Isaac Asimov

  Death, Suicide, Atheist

  Isaac Asimov (1992). “Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine”

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

  Isaac Asimov

  Enemy, Sticks, Beats

  Isaac Asimov (1979). “The far ends of time and earth”

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• I was once being interviewed by Barbara Walters. In between two of the segments she asked me: "But what would you do if the doctor gave you only six months to live?" I said, "Type faster." This was widely quoted, but the "six months" was changed to "six minutes," which bothered me. It's "six months."

  Isaac Asimov

  Doctors, Two, Six Months

  "Asimov Laughs Again: More Than 700 Favorite Jokes, Limericks and Anecdotes". Book by Isaac Asimov, 1992.

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• What I will be remembered for are the Foundation Trilogy and the Three Laws of Robotics. What I want to be remembered for is no one book, or no dozen books. Any single thing I have written can be paralleled or even surpassed by something someone else has done. However, my total corpus for quantity, quality and variety can be duplicated by no one else. That is what I want to be remembered for.

  Isaac Asimov

  Book, Writing, Law

  Isaac Asimov (1995). “Yours, Isaac Asimov: A Lifetime of Letters”, Doubleday Books

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• One might suppose that reality must be held to at all costs. However, though that may be the moral thing to do, it is not necessarily the most useful thing to do. The Greeks themselves chose the ideal over the real in their geometry and demonstrated very well that far more could be achieved by consideration of abstract line and form than by a study of the real lines and forms of the world; the greater understanding achieved through abstraction could be applied most usefully to the very reality that was ignored in the process of gaining knowledge.

  Isaac Asimov

  Real, Math, Understanding

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