Quotes from Isaac Asimov

He clearly knew how dangerous it was to have an excited twelve-year-old handling a powerful weapon.

If you think that those who are left, with practically no knowledge of the elements of science, or worse, still, with the distorted knowledge the priests receive, can penetrate at a bound to nuclear power, to electronics, to the theory of the hyperwarp – you have a very romantic and very foolish idea of science. It takes lifetimes of training and an excellent brain to get that far.

A strong offensive is indicated. The stalemate you seem to be satisfied with is fatal. It would be a confession of weakness to all the worlds of the Periphery, where the appearance of strength is all-important, and there's not one vulture among

Baley distrusted overstatement and had no liking for the armchair deducer who discovered certainty rather than probability in the workings of logic.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.' 

even the purest and most high-minded scientist finds it expedient sometimes to assault the fortress of truth with the blunt weapon of trail and error. sometimes it works beautifully.

We can see, now, that the social background of the Empire makes wars of conquest impossible for it. Under weak Emperors, it is torn apart by generals competing for a worthless and surely death-bringing throne. Under strong Emperors, the Empire is frozen into a paralytic rigor in which disintegration apparently ceases for the moment, but only at the sacrifice of all possible growth.

To him, a stilted geometric love of arrangement was "system," an indefatigable and feverish interest in the pettiest facets of day-to-day bureaucracy was "industry," indecision when right was "caution," and blind stubbornness when wrong, "determination." And withal he wasted no money, killed no man needlessly, and meant extremely well.

There is no pleasure like the absence of pain – immediately after pain.

Life is not like a murder mystery. In mysteries people always do the same thing. Then when some little thing is out of line, some wise-guy amateur detective makes big deductions. In real life, people don't do the same things all the time. They do different things at different times. In real life, people are crazy.

There was no doubt about it: the City was the culmination of man's mastery over the environment. Not space travel, not the fifty colonized worlds that were now so haughtily independent, but the City.

It might seem to you, Peter, that a truck driver, one step above an ape in your view, can't remember. But truck drivers can have brains, too.

His idiot face gets redder and his eyes bulge and his ears block. I'd say his mind stops functioning, but I lack the proof of any other state from which it might stop." Bronowski

An incompetent traitor is no danger. It is rather the capable men who must be watched.

Work of each individual contributes to a totality and so becomes undying part of a totality. That totality is human life. Past and present and to come forms a tapestry that has been in existence now for many tens and thousands of years. And has been growing more elaborate, and on the whole more beautiful.

Consider—to give up a heathen is to lose nothing for your ancestors, whereas with the gold you get in exchange you can ornament the shrines of their holy spirits. And surely, were gold evil in itself, if such a thing could be, the evil would depart of necessity once the metal were put to such pious use.

So it is only the combination of strong Emperor and strong general that can harm the Foundation; for a strong Emperor cannot be dethroned easily, and a strong general is forced to turn outwards, past the frontiers.

In the empty expanses of space, the wandering traders need men like myself to care for the spiritual side of a life so given over to commerce, and worldly pursuits.

He slept that night the sleep of a successfully stubborn man.

Surely it is better that the immoral learn morality through adversity than that the moral forget morality in prosperity.

Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.

Of course, the reader might argue that I was as stubborn in my viewpoint as they were in theirs. Yes, indeed, but I was right and they were wrong and that made the difference.

That's right, but it's not a mathematical proposition. It's a sociological observation and there is always the possibility of exceptions to such observations. - Dr. Mandamus to Dr. Kelden Amadiro

It's really disheartening, the universal stupidity. I think that I wouldn't grieve at mankind's suicide through sheer evilness of heart, or through mere recklessness. There's something so damned undignified at going to destruction through sheer thickheaded stupidity. What's the use of being men if that's how you have to die.