Quotes from Isaac Asimov

In themselves, harmless. As a group, incredibly dangerous.

All knowledge is one. When a light brightens and illuminates a corner of a room, it adds to the general illumination of the entire room. Over and over again, scientific discoveries have provided answers to problems that had no apparent connection with the phenomena that gave rise to the discovery.

You don't beat refusal to believe in a frontal attack.

Darkness thickened and collapsed about him. Some of it never lifted again.

Changelessness is decay. A paradox. There is no decay without a change for the worse. Changelessness is a change for the worse

Only a lie that wasn't ashamed of itself could possibly succeed

How harmful overspecialization is. It cuts knowledge at a million points and leaves it bleeding.

A great many things are possible." And to himself he added: But not practical.

It is the invariable lesson to humanity that distance in time, and in space as well, lends focus.

Who?" "Schiller. A German dramatist of three centuries ago. In a play about Joan of Arc, he said, 'Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.' I'm no god and I'll contend no longer. Let it go, Pete, and go your way. Maybe the world will last our time and, if not, there's nothing that can be done anyway. I'm sorry, Pete. You fought the good fight, but you lost, and I'm through.

In all the known history of Mankind, advances have been made primarily in physical technology; in the capacity of handling the inanimate world about Man. Control of self and society has been left to to chance or to the vague gropings of intuitive ethical systems based on inspiration and emotion. As a result no culture of greater stability than about fifty-five percent has ever existed, and these only as the result of great human misery.

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be ...

Victories over ingrained patterns of thought are not won in a day or a year.

To insult someone we call him 'bestial'. For deliberate cruelty and nature, 'human' might be the greater insult.

No individual death among human beings is important. Someone who dies leaves his work behind and that does not entirely die. It never entirely dies as long as humanity exists.

I'll take that challenge. It's a dead hand against a living will.

How then to enforce peace? Not by reason, certainly, nor by education. If a man could not look at the fact of peace and the fact of war and choose the former in preference to the latter, what additional argument could persuade him? What could be more eloquent as a condemnation of war than war itself?

Meaning well is a poor defense

Fighting and scars are part of a trader's overhead. But fighting is only useful when there's money at the end, and if I can get it without, so much the sweeter.

But he no longer feared the fear! It was not something to run from, that fear, but something to fight.

The fact of the matter is that young men lack skill and experience and are very likely to approach a girl as though she were a sack of wheat. It is the old man—suave, debonair, maturely charming—who knows exactly what to do and how to do it, and is therefore better at it.

It lacks glamour? - It lacks mob emotion-appeal. - Same thing.

People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.

Does everyone just believe what he wants to? As long as possible. Sometimes longer. What about you? You mean, am I human? Certainly. I don't believe I'm really old. I believe I'm quite attractive. I believe you seek out my company because you think I'm charming - even when you insist on turning the conversation to physics.