Quotes from Isaac Asimov

I'm forty-nine, not fifteen, and I've made my peace with myself. Had I been handsome and stupid when I was fifteen, or twenty-one, as, at that time in life, I wished I had been, I would undoubtedly now no longer be handsome--but I'd still be stupid. So, in the long run, I've won out.

a moving finger having once written could never be lured back to unwrite.

La verdad científica está más allá de toda lealtad y deslealtad.

when the old empire began to rot at the fringes, it could be considered that science, as science, had failed the outer worlds. To be re-accepted it would have to present itself in another guise

the destruction of what should not be, that is, the destruction of what you people call evil, is less just and desirable than the conversion of this evil into what you call good.

Even at the time, [he] felt his anger to be out of proportion to the cause, but it represented an accumulation of resentment.

There's no way we can raise a positronic brain one inch above the level of perfect materialism. "We can't, damn it, we can't. Not as long as we don't understand what makes our own brains tick. Not as long as things exist that science can't measure. What is beauty, or goodness, or art, or love, or God? We're forever teetering on the brink of the unknowable, and trying to understand what can't be understood. It's what makes us men.

No one is so modest as not to believe himself a competent amateur sleuth...

The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that 'right' and 'wrong' are absolute; that everything that isn't perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong.

Here were the same long cold bare corridors, the same lowest common denominator of design and decoration, with every light source designed so as to irritate as few people as possible and to please just as few.

Battling a sickness of the spirit was like standing in a quickstand and beating it with a stick.

Never let your sense of morals keep you from doing what is right.

What we gain in the straightaways, we lose in the roundabouts. That's the way the universe works. We've just got to fool it somehow.

Battling a sickness of the spirit was like standing in a quicksand and beating it with a stick.

Nowadays, of course, we are taught that the flat-Earth theory is wrong; that it is all wrong, absolutely. But it isn't. The curvature of the Earth is nearly 0 per mile, so that although the flat-Earth theory is wrong, it happens to be nearly right. That's why the theory lasted so long.

You're a Lousy dame, lady, said Raych. I'm a Lousy dame with a quick knife, Raych, so get moving.

Where is the world whose people don't prefer a comfortable, warm, and well-worn belief, however illogical, to the chilly winds of uncertainty?

The action of social revolution and the reaction of guarding against such revolution or combating it once it has begun are the causes of a great deal of the human misery with which history is permeated.

Common belief, even universal belief, is not, in itself, evidence.

What kind of a ridiculous animal are we to be lords of the world after the dinosaurs had failed? Sure, we're intelligent, but what's intelligence? We think it is important because we have it. If the Tyrannosaurus could have picked out the one quality that he thought would ensure species domination, it would be size and strength. And he would make a better case for it. He lasted longer than we're likely to.

The elderly man, flushed with pleasure, was recounting in voluble fashion his experiences and impressions. His wife joined in periodically, with meticulous corrections involving completely unimportant points; these being given and taken in the best of humor.

Now, when I read constantly about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that the door is closing and that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.

Unfortunately, an uninformed public tends to confuse scholarship with magicianry, and love life seems to be that factor which requires the largest quantity of magical tinkering.

Why not? You and I are eccentrics. We're certainly not typical of the people living on Terminus. As for criminals, that's a matter of definition. And if criminals are the price we must pay for rebels, heretics, and geniuses, I'm willing to pay it. I demand the price be paid.