Quotes from Isaac Asimov

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 labouring under the weight of concentrated thought – may solve the problem for you.

Consegue entender que, ao afastar as armadilhas e vicissitudes que perseguem o homem, a Eternidade não deixa que ele encontre suas próprias soluções, boas e amargas, soluções reais que chegam quando a dificuldade é enfrentada, não evitada?

última parte de la serie…

Los seguidores del Viejo de la Montaña fueron llamados hashishin («fumadores de hachís»). Para los europeos, este nombre se convirtió en la voz «asesinos».

My feeling is that as far as creativity is concerned, isolation is required.

The human mind resents control.

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.

The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of physics, and if the probabilities of error are greater, it is only because history does not deal with as many humans as physics does atoms, so that individual variations count for more. Seldon predicted a series of crises through the thousand years of growth, each of which would force a new turning of our history into a pre-calculated path. It is those crises which direct us – and therefore a crisis must come now.

We speak of time and mind, which do not easily yield to categories. We separate past and future and find that time is an amalgam of both. We separate good and evil and find that mind is an amalgam of both. To understand, we must grasp the whole.

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.

the telemetrists began to use a computer to program the computer that designed the program for the computer that programmed the robot-controlling computer. There was nothing but confusion.

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.

He felt that dull, heart-choking pain that feeds on itself, the pain of a wife no longer by his side at waking, of a familiar world lost…

It is my belief that throughout the history of the positronic robot, the First Law of Robotics has been deliberately misquoted.

muy pocos de los anónimos viajeros se detienen a pensar en la red tecnológica que une los caminos del espacio.

Habrá otras crisis en el porvenir, cuando el poder del dinero se haya convertido en una fuerza muerta como es ahora la religión. Que mis sucesores resuelvan esos nuevos problemas, como yo he resuelto el del presente.

Where any answer is possible, all answers are meaningless.

Since when does prejudice follow any law but its own.

Por desgracia, un público no informado tiende a confundir la erudición con la magia, y la vida amorosa parece ser el factor que requiere mayor cantidad de argucias.

Science doesn't purvey absolute truth. Science is a mechanism. It's a way of trying to improve your knowledge of nature. It's a system for testing your thoughts against the universe and seeing whether they match.

Eventually, it had to be accepted that God had created invisible stars and this was the very first hint that perhaps the Universe had not been created with human welfare as its primary object (a point I have never seen stressed in histories of science)

It was childish to feel disappointed, but childishness comes almost as naturally to a man as to a child, and there was a lump in Gaal's throat.

No me considero como un ser de inteligencia subnormal, pero la cuestión es que su vaga conferencia no es muy reveladora.

the satisfied awe that marks the triumph of someone who has been hovering at the edge of an inferiority complex for three years.