Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It has always been my ambition to die in harness with my head face down on a keyboard and my nose caught between two of the keys.
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.
Goodbye, Hari, my love. Remember always--all you did for me.” -I did nothing for you.” -You loved me and your love made me--human.
And in man is a three-pound brain which, as far as we know, is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter in the universe.
Author's Notes: This story starts with section 6. This is not a mistake. I have my own subtle reasoning. So, just read, and enjoy.
All the hundreds of millions of people who, in their time, believed the Earth was flat never succeeded in unrounding it by an inch.
When I feel difficulty coming on, I switch to another book I'm writing. When I get back to the problem, my unconscious has solved it.
Fertility is hereditary. If your parents didn't have any children, neither will you. I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
It takes more than capital to swing business. You've got to have the A. I. D. degree to get by - Advertising, Initiative, and Dynamics.
Science is a set of rules to keep us from telling lies to each other. All scientists really have is a reputation for telling the truth.
There is not a discovery in science, however revolutionary, however sparkling with insight, that does not arise out of what went before.
One might accept death reasoningly, with every aspect of the conscious mind, but the body was a brute beast that knew nothing of reason.
Scientific apparatus offers a window to knowledge, but as they grow more elaborate, scientists spend ever more time washing the windows.
Fifty years," I hackneyed, "is a long time." "Not when you're looking back at them," she said. "You wonder how they vanished so quickly.
Human beings sometimes find a kind of pleasure in nursing painful emotions, in blaming themselves without reason or even against reason.
Things do change. The only question is that since things are deteriorating so quickly, will society and man's habits change quickly enough?
All sorts of computer errors are now turning up. You'd be surprised to know the number of doctors who claim they are treating pregnant men.
One thought that occurs to me is that men will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better.
There is no one so insufferable as a person who gives no other excuse for a peculiar action than saying he had been directed to it in a dream.
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. [The Second Law of Robotics]
Where is the world whose people don't prefer a comfortable, warm, and well-worn belief, however illogical, to the chilly winds of uncertainty.
There is nothing frightening about an eternal dreamless sleep. Surely it is better than eternal torment in Hell and eternal boredom in Heaven.
Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.
To introduce something altogether new would mean to begin all over, to become ignorant again, and to run the old, old risk of failing to learn.
Self-education is a continuing source of pleasure to me, for the more I know, the fuller my life is and the better I appreciate my own existence
We are all victimized by the natural perversity of inanimate objects...and the assorted human beings who perpetuate and maintain this perversity.
The world in general disapproves of creativity, and to be creative in public is particularly bad. Even to speculate in public is rather worrisome.
So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You'd better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can't rearrange the universe.
The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.
I consider violence an uneconomical way of attaining an end. There are always better substitutes, though they may sometimes be a little less direct.
Any system which allows men to choose their own future will end by choosing safety and mediocrity, and in such a Reality the stars are out of reach.
I don't think I've ever held a racket in my hand ... There's got to be somebody in the US who isn't trying to play tennis and stinking up the court.
Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.
There never can be a man so lost as one who is lost in the vast and intricate corridors of his own lonely mind, where none may reach and none may save.
When asked for advice by beginners. Know your ending, I say, or the river of your story may finally sink into the desert sands and never reach the sea.
Inertia! Our ruling class knows one law; no change. Despotism! They know one rule; force. Maldistribution! They know one desire; to hold what is theirs.
When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.
God, how that stings! I've spent a lifetime loving science fiction and now I find that you must expect nothing of something that's just science fiction.
Once you get it into your head that somebody is controlling events, you can interpret everything in that light and find no reasonable certainty anywhere.
The history of science is full of revolutionary advances that required small insights that anyone might have had, but that, in fact, only one person did.
Since emotions are few and reasons are many (said the robot Giscard) the behavior of a crowd can be more easily predicted than the behavior of one person.
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.
There is no right to deny freedom to any object with a mind advanced enough to grasp the concept and desire the state. -(from "The Bicentennial Man) story)
No vision of God and heaven ever experienced by the most exalted prophet can, in my opinion, match the vision of the universe as seen by Newton or Einstein
I wanted to be a psychological engineer, but we lacked the facilities, so I did the next best thing - I went into politics. It's practically the same thing.
We are reaching the stage where the problems we must solve are going to become insoluble without computers. I do not fear computers, I fear the lack of them.
A myth or legend is simply not made up out of a vacuum. Nothing is--or can be. Somehow there is a kernel of truth behind it, however distorted that might be.
There are no nations! There is only humanity. And if we don't come to understand that right soon, there will be no nations, because there will be no humanity.
Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil-but there is no way around them.
Life is glorious when it is happy; days are carefree when they are happy; the interplay of thought and imagination is far superior to that of muscle and sinew.