Isaac Asimov Quotes - Page 16

Quotes about:

• Life would be impossible on such a planet. It wouldn't get enough heat and light, and if it rotated there would be total darkness half of every day. There wouldn't be any native inhabitants. You couldn't expect life - which is fundamentally dependent on light - to develop under such extreme conditions of light deprivation. Half of every axial rotation spent in Darkness! No, nothing could exist under conditions like that.

  Isaac Asimov

  Light, Darkness, Would Be

  "Darkness in literature: 'Nightfall' by Isaac Asimov" by Richard Lea, www.theguardian.com. December 19, 2012.

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Isaac Asimov

  Games, Chess, Busy

  5 Copy quote

• Surely, if we take on thinking partners - or, at the least, thinking servants - in the form of machines, we will be more comfortable with them, and will relate to them more easily, if they are shaped like humans. It will be easier to be friends with human-shaped robots than with specialized machines of unrecognizable shape. And I sometimes think that, in the desperate straits of humanity today, we would be grateful to have nonhuman friends, even if they are only the friends we build ourselves.

  Isaac Asimov

  Grateful, Thinking, Humanity

  4 Copy quote

• Speech as known to us was unnecessary. A fragment of a sentence amounted almost to a long-winded redundancy. A gesture, a grunt, the curve of a facial line--even a significantly timed pause yielded informational juice.

  Isaac Asimov

  Curves, Long, Juice

  Isaac Asimov (2004). “Second Foundation”, p.19, Spectra

  4 Copy quote

• In theory, there is nothing the computer can do that the human mind can not do. The computer merely takes a finite amount of data and performs a finite number of operations upon them. The human mind can duplicate the process

  Isaac Asimov

  Finite Number, Data, Numbers

  Isaac Asimov (1990). “The Complete Stories”, Broadway Books

  4 Copy quote

• With both people and computers on the job, computer error can be more quickly tracked down and corrected by people and, conversely, human error can be more quickly corrected by computers. What it amounts to is that nothing serious can happen unless human error and computer error take place simultaneously. And that hardly ever happens.

  Isaac Asimov

  Jobs, Errors, People

  7 Copy quote

• Never judge your own writing. You're not fit to do so.

  Isaac Asimov

  Writing, Judging, Fit

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

  4 Copy quote

• Plate glass... has no beauty of its own. Ideally, you ought not to be able to see it at all, but through it you can see all that is happening outside. That is the equivalent of writing that is plain and unadorned. Ideally, in reading such writing, you are not even aware that you are reading. Ideas and events seem merely to flow from the mind of the writer into that of the reader without any barrier between. I hope that is what is happening when you read this book

  Isaac Asimov

  Book, Reading, Writing

  4 Copy quote

• The dangers that face the world can, every one of them, be traced back to science. The salvations that may save the world will, every one of them, be traced back to science.

  Isaac Asimov

  Science, World, May

  4 Copy quote

• Experimentation is the least arrogant method of gaining knowledge. The experimenter humbly asks a question of nature.

  Isaac Asimov

  Knowledge, Science, Arrogance

  4 Copy quote

• I never considered myself a patriot. I like to think I recognize only humanity as my nation.

  Isaac Asimov

  Thinking, Humanity, Patriotism

  Isaac Asimov (2012). “Foundation's Edge”, p.245, Spectra

  8 Copy quote

• All of a sudden, space isn't friendly. All of a sudden, it's a place where people can die. . . . Many more people are going to die. But we can't explore space if the requirement is that there be no casualties; we can't do anything if the requirement is that there be no casualties.

  Isaac Asimov

  Space, People, Safety

  4 Copy quote

• Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil-but there is no way around them.

  Isaac Asimov

  Writing, Rejection, Soul

  7 Copy quote

• I'm an indoors person. I'm not afraid of the outdoors and I penetrate it easily and cheerfully. However, I must admit I like Central Park better than the wilderness, and I like the canyons of Manhattan better than Central Park, and I like the interior of my apartment better than the canyons of Manhattan, and I like my two rooms better with the shades down at all times than with the shades up. I'm not an agoraphobe at all, but I am a claustrophile, if you see the distinction.

  Isaac Asimov

  Central Park, Two, Parks

  4 Copy quote

• The history of science is full of revolutionary advances that required small insights that anyone might have had, but that, in fact, only one person did.

  Isaac Asimov

  Might, Facts, Revolutionary

  "The Three Numbers". Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, September 1974.

  4 Copy quote

• Before another century is done it will be hard for people to imagine a time when humanity was confined to one world, and it will seem to them incredible that there was ever anybody who doubted the value of space and wanted to turn his or her back on the Universe.

  Isaac Asimov

  Future, Science, Space

  4 Copy quote

• The peace and joy of the Christmas season was marred by a proclamation of a general strike of all the military forces of the world. Panic reigns in the hearts of all the patriots of every persuasion. Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time low over the world.

  Isaac Asimov

  Peace, Fear, Military

  4 Copy quote

• Unfortunately, in many cases, people who write science fiction violate the laws of nature, not because they want to make a point, but because they don't know what the laws of nature are.

  Isaac Asimov

  Writing, Knowledge, Science

  Isaac Asimov, Carl Howard Freedman (2005). “Conversations with Isaac Asimov”, p.176, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  8 Copy quote

• 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)

  Isaac Asimov

  Men, Mind, Desire

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Isaac Asimov

  Fighting, Self, Temptation

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

  6 Copy quote

• Fifty years," I hackneyed, "is a long time." "Not when you're looking back at them," she said. "You wonder how they vanished so quickly.

  Isaac Asimov

  Years, Long, Fifty

  Isaac Asimov (1950). “I, Robot”, Roc

  8 Copy quote

• There are many aspects of the universe that still cannot be explained satisfactorily by science; but ignorance implies only ignorance that may someday be conquered. To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

  Isaac Asimov

  Ignorance, May, Today

  "The 'Threat' Of Creationism" by Isaac Asimov, www.nytimes.com. June 14, 1981.

  7 Copy quote

• I don't expect to live forever, nor do I repine over that, but I am weak enough to want to be remembered forever. - Yet how few of those who have lived, even of those who have accomplished far more than I have, linger on in world memory for even a single century after death

  Isaac Asimov

  Memories, Forever, World

  Isaac Asimov (2002). “It's Been a Good Life”, Pyr Books

  7 Copy quote

• People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. They are far too ready to dismiss it and to build arcane structures of extremely rickety substance in order to avoid it. I, on the other hand, see coincidence everywhere as an inevitable consequence of the laws of probability, according to which having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be.

  Isaac Asimov

  Science, Hands, Order

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

  10 Copy quote

• Science is complex and chilling. The mathematical language of science is understood by very few. The vistas it presents are scary-an enormous universe ruled by chance and impersonal rules, empty and uncaring, ungraspable and vertiginous. How comfortable to turn instead to a small world, only a few thousand years old, and under God's personal; and immediate care; a world in which you are His peculiar concern.

  Isaac Asimov

  God, Science, Years

  4 Copy quote

Page 16 of 18

First

← Prev

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin