Quotes from Isaac Asimov

When they sat down at a small table and punched in their orders

I am a creature of dreams as well as of reason.

On Earth, we have a continuous influx of young people who are willing to change because they haven't had time to grow hard set in their ways. I suppose there's some optimum. A life long enough for real accomplishment and short enough to make way for youth at a rate that's not too slow.

Baley tried to picture a world as a sphere being lit and unlit as it turned. He found it hard to do and felt scornful of the so-superior Spacers who let such an essential thing as time be dictated to them by the vagaries of planetary movements.

Golan, spuse Pelorat, am impresia ca progresul civilizatiei nu reprezinta nimic altceva decat un exercitiu de limitare a intimitatii.

But I'd be killed, and I never like to count on that when I'm making plans. It doesn't pay off.

All of life is a symphony of successive losses. You lose your youth, your parents, your loves, your friends, your comforts, your health, and finally your life. To deny loss is to lose it all anyway and to lose, in addition, your self-possession and peace of mind.

if people believe this, they would act on that belief. Many a prophecy, by the mere force of its being believed, is transmuted

Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics," and here they are: 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.

And AC said, LET THERE BE LIGHT! And there was light --

If it were evenly distributed, said Rodman, the example of justice in the world might lead at last to a sane world policy. As it is, there is world despair and fury over the selfish fortune of a few, and all behave irrationally in revenge.

Look heah, now, I've got the wuhks of all the old mastahs—the gweat ahchaeologists of the past. I wigh them against each othah—balance the disagweements—analyze the conflicting statements—decide which is pwobably cowwect—and come to a conclusion. That is the scientific method. At least"—patronizingly—"as I see it.

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.

no matter how sure scientists think they are, nature has a way of surprising them.

Science is constructed out of approximations that gradually approach the truth

Well, not the stuff they use in robotics, which I wouldn't follow, but sociological relationships I can handle. For instance, I'm familiar with the Teramin Relationship." "The what, sir?" "Maybe you have a different name for it. The differential of inconveniences suffered with privileges granted: dee eye sub jay taken to the nth——" "What are you talking about?

But now, Earthmen are all so coddled, so enwombed in their imprisoning caves of steel, that they are caught forever.

A man without weaknesses serves only to make everyone else conscious of his own imperfections. A primitive poet named Tennyson once wrote: 'He is all fault who has no fault at all.

It is an affair of a romantic idiot; but even a romantic idiot can be a deadly weapon when an unromantic rebel uses him as a tool.

Surely the relationship between inconveniences suffered and privileges granted was part of the very essentials of learning how to handle people without an explosion.

60,000 kilometres per second may be the practical (!) speed limit for space travel

Here in the Periphery they've lost nuclear power. In Gamma Andromeda, a power plant has undergone meltdown because of poor repairs, and the Chancellor of the Empire complains that nuclear technicians are scarce. And the solution? To train new ones? Never! Instead they're to restrict nuclear power." And for the third time: "Don't you see? It's Galaxy-wide. It's a worship of the past. It's a deterioration—a stagnation!

George Weston, after all was only a man—poor thing—and his wife made full use of every device which a clumsier and more scrupulous sex has learned, with reason and futility, to fear.

Re the temperature of Venus's surface No one had expected such a hot Venus