Quotes from Isaac Asimov

Intuition! What's that? Define it!" "Easily. Intuition is the art, peculiar to the human mind, of working out the correct answer from data that is, in itself, incomplete or even, perhaps, misleading.

three ships lost in the same sector in the same year can't be accident, and

The Three Laws of Robotics 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. Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.

No employee makes the same mistake twice. He is fired the first time.

To the philosophical mind, these items might seem scarcely worth any great trouble to acquire. Yet no one, however philosophical, could give up those privileges, once acquired, without a pang. That was the point.

sólo una mentira que no estuviera avergonzada de sí misma podía tener éxito. También dijo que nada tenía que ser cierto, pero que todo tenía que sonar como si lo fuese.

We are gaining the knowledge; science is giving us that. Now we need wisdom as well.

Imagine that. Terrible, terrible, the way we have all bent to the yoke; the affection we have for the harness about us.

I have always found in my own work—quite different from yours, of course, but possibly we may generalize—that zeroing in tightly on a particular problem is self-defeating. Why not relax and talk about something else, and your unconscious mind—not laboring under the weight of concentrated thought—may solve the problem for you.

It had happened with the sudden catastrophe of a dream – and with all the unreal horror of a dream.

And it was the amount of energy a single human could produce that dictated military potential, standard of living, happiness, and all besides.

Are you well, sir?" asked Giskard. It was a foolish question, dictated by the programming of the robot, thought Baley, though, at that, it was no worse than the questions asked by human beings, sometimes with wild inappropriateness, out of the programming of etiquette.

And as long as it is so believed, Procurator, and as long as we of Earth are treated as pariahs, you are going to find in us the characteristics to which you object.

Siempre han confiado en la autoridad o en el pasado, nunca en sí mismos. Sus

Por la Galaxia! ¿Cuándo puede saber un hombre que no es un títere? ¿Cómo puede saber un hombre que no es un títere?

Some day, with all that the Cities could do, the available calories per person would simply fall below basic subsistence level.

And now a hundred subjective years had passed in those hundred objective hours and he could no longer clearly visualize the university at all or the life of sad frustration he had been leading there toward the end.

what if there are a million intelligences in the Galaxy, but only one that is expansionist

Hardin once said: 'To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.

THE FOUNDATION NOVELS Prelude to Foundation Foundation Foundation and Empire Second Foundation Foundation's Edge Forward the Foundation

There's probably no one so easily bribed, but he lacks even the fundamental honesty of honorable corruption. He doesn't stay bribed; not for any sum.

There are always tales and there is always a patriotic refusal to disbelieve, even though the tales are never in the least credible and are never believed by anyone not of the world that produces them.

Es un error —comenzó— suponer que la opinión pública quiere que se proteja el medioambiente o que les salven la vida y que, por tanto, se mostrarían muy agradecidos ante cualquier idealista que luche por conseguir esos objetivos. Lo que el público quiere es bienestar individual.

Since the forthcoming write-up of my Ph.D. dissertation was much in my mind, it was the work of a moment to begin a solemn dissertation containing all the stigmata of academic turgidity about a substance which dissolved in water 1.12 seconds before you added the water.