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Isaac Asimov

396 quotes

“If you're going to write a story, avoid contemporary references. They date a story and they have no staying power.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Buy Jupiter and Other Stories (1975), p. 134
“Generals are, as a matter of course, allowed to be far more idiotic than ordinary human beings are permitted to be.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Our Federal Union (1975), p. 248
“People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. They are far too ready to dismiss it and to build arcane structures of extremely rickety substance in order to avoid it. I, on the other hand, see coincidence everywhere as an inevitable consequence of the laws of probability, according to which having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Planet that Wasn't" originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (May 1975)
“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.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Three Numbers" in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (September 1974); reprinted in More Tales of the Black Widowers (1976)
“I believe that only scientists can understand the universe. It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1978 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright (1978), p. 235
“Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today — but the core of science fiction, its essence, the concept around which it revolves, has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1978 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: My Own View" in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1978) edited by Robert Holdstock; later published in Asimov on Science Fiction (1981)
“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 ... This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1978 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: My Own View" in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1978) edited by Robert Holdstock; later published in Asimov on Science Fiction (1981)
“Where any answer is possible, all answers are meaningless.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Road to Infinity (1979), p. 170
“I simply don't think it is reasonable to use IQ tests to produce results of questionable value, which may then serve to justify racists in their own minds and to help bring about the kinds of tragedies we have already witnessed earlier in this century.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Alas, All Human" in Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1979
“In memory yet green, in joy still felt, The scenes of life rise sharply into view. We triumph; Life’s disasters are undealt, And while all else is old, the world is new.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Poem credited to "Anon" within his autobiography In Memory Yet Green (1979), but which Asimov himself had written to provide titles to two volumes of his autobiography, after his publisher suggested he use dramatic line…
“I wouldn't give an astrologer the time of day.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Memory Yet Green (Avon Books, 1979), p. 18
“It is surely better to be wronged than to do wrong.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Memory Yet Green (1979), p. 175
“The purpose of aphorisms is to keep fools who have memorised them from having nothing to say.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Memory Yet Green (1979), p. 188
“There is less trouble and trauma involved in writing a new piece than in trying to salvage an unsatisfactory old one.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Memory Yet Green (1979), p. 200
“The undramatic fact is that I just think and think and think until I have something [for a story], and there is nothing marvelous or artistic about the phenomenon.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Memory Yet Green (1979), pp. 301–302
“Certain success evicts one from the paradise of winning against the odds.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Memory Yet Green (1979), p. 420
“The military mind remains unparalleled as a vehicle of creative stupidity.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Memory Yet Green (1979), p. 461
“It is very likely that there are many, many planets carrying life, even intelligent life, throughout the universe, because there are so many stars. By sheer chance, even if those chances are small, a great many life forms and a great many intelligences may exist.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview in Southwest Airlines Magazine 1979)
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Cult of Ignorance", Newsweek (21 January 1980).
“I believe that every human being with a physically normal brain can learn a great deal and can be surprisingly intellectual. I believe that what we badly need is social approval of learning and social rewards for learning. We can all be members of the intellectual elite and then, and only then, will a phrase like "America's right to know" and, indeed, any true concept of democracy, have any meaning.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Cult of Ignorance", Newsweek (21 January 1980)
“[Creationists] make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Often attributed as remarks to the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) (1980)
“It is my own experience ... that commentators are far more ingenious at finding meaning than authors are at inserting it.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Annotated Gulliver's Travels (1980), p. 16
“Weisinger, a couple of years ago, made up the following story: "Isaac Asimov was asked how Superman could fly faster than the speed of light, which was supposed to be an absolute limit. To this Asimov replied, 'That the speed of light is a limit is a theory; that Superman can travel faster than light is a fact.'”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When you write a short story ... you had better know the ending first. The end of a story is only the end to the reader. To the writer, it's the beginning. If you don't know exactly where you're going every minute you're writing, you'll never get there — or anywhere.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Casebook of the Black Widowers (1980), p. 177
“Necessity makes a joke of civilization.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Joy Still Felt (1980), p. 124
“I make no secret about being Jewish ... I just think it's more important to be human and to have a human heritage; and I think it is wrong for anyone to feel that there is anything special about any one heritage of whatever kind. It is delightful to have the human heritage exist in a thousand varieties, for it makes for greater interest, but as soon as one variety is thought to be more important than another, the groundwork is laid for destroying them all.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Joy Still Felt (1980), p. 147
“I am not a visual person. I have spent so many bounded years in my childhood that I have grown used to having books as my window on reality.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Joy Still Felt (1980), p. 217
“The fact is that I've never called myself a genius, and I think the term has been cheapened by overuse into meaninglessness. If other people want to call me that, that's their problem.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Joy Still Felt (1980), p. 255
“I joke sometimes to the effect that when I approach a part of a book where I must explain something I don't understand, I just type faster and faster and faster. Then, when I get to the part I don't understand, sheer inertia pushes me through. That's not literally true, of course, but there's something to it psychologically.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Joy Still Felt (1980), p. 281
“No matter how various the subject matter I write on, I was a science-fiction writer first and it is as a science-fiction writer that I want to be identified.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Joy Still Felt (1980), pp. 286-287
“Of all the books I have ever worked on, I think Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare gave me the most pleasure, day in, day out. For months and months I lived and thought Shakespeare, and I don't see how there can be any greater pleasure in the world—any pleasure, that is, that one can indulge in for as much as ten hours without pause, day after day indefinitely.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Joy Still Felt (1980), pp. 464–465
“The best way to describe anyone is to give an example of the kind of thing he would do.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Joy Still Felt (1980), p. 499
“People don't stop things they enjoy doing just because they reach a certain age. They don't stop playing tennis just because they turn 40, they don't stop with sex just because they turn 40; they keep it up as long as they can if they enjoy it, and learning will be the same thing.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are many aspects of the universe that still cannot be explained satisfactorily by science; but ignorance only implies ignorance that may someday be conquered. To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The “Threat” of Creationism" in New York Times Magazine (14 June 1981)
“There is no version of primeval history, preceding the discoveries of modern science, that is as rational and as inspiring as that of the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In the Beginning (1981), introduction, p. 3
“The Bible and science agree in being unable to say anything certainly about what happened before the beginning. There is this difference. The Bible will never be able to tell us. It has reached its final form, and it simply doesn't say. Science, on the other hand, is still developing, and the time may come when it can answer questions that, at present, it cannot.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In the Beginning (1981), p. 14
“If one thing goes without saying, almost anything can.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In the Beginning (1981), p. 84
“But suppose we were to teach creationism. What would be the content of the teaching? Merely that a creator formed the universe and all species of life ready-made? Nothing more? No details?”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Dangerous Myth of Creationism" in Penthouse (January 1982); reprinted as Ch. 2 : "Creationism and the Schools" in The Roving Mind (1983), p. 16
“I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Free Inquiry (Spring 1982)
“Earth is a ball that is over 12,000 kilometres in diameter, and if it were modelled into an object the size of a billiard ball, with all its surface unevenness reproduced exactly to scale, the model would be smoother than an ordinary billiard ball—and the ocean would be an all but unnoticeable mist of dampness over 70 percent of its surface.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Exploring the Earth and the Cosmos (1982), p. 85
“An optimistic view of the future would indicate that before long, the clear necessity of expanding humanity's horizons would cause ... space settlements to be built. The construction would also serve as a great project that not only would be clearly of great benefit, but might induce human cooperation in something large enough to fire the heart and mind, and make people forget the petty quarrels that have engaged them for thousands of years in wars over insignificant scraps of earthly territory.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Exploring the Earth and the Cosmos (1982), p. 153
“[S]cientists have pushed back the horizon of time from the biblical 6,000 years to 4,600,000,000 years for the age of Earth—a 760,000-fold increase.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Exploring the Earth and the Cosmos (1982), p. 209
“There were many more stories in the course of the year that were printed and that dealt with the nuclear nightmare, and who knows how many stories that were written and were never published. It was an overriding terror in the years that immediately followed Hiroshima; and it is only the callousness of habituation that hasn’t caused the terror to increase steadily—for the danger has.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introduction to Theodore Sturgeon’s story Thunder and Roses in Isaac Asimov Presents The Golden Years of Science Fiction, Fifth Series (1983), (in the 1985 hardcover reprint), pp. 343-344
“It is a rather sad commentary on humanity that it is always so attractive to think that some small group “controls the Earth”—the Jews, the international bankers, the Communists, the Masons, the Trilateral Commission. Those who believe such things are so sincere, so harried, so paranoid and, if the times are bad enough, and if the hunger for a scapegoat is great enough—so convincing. The Nazis are the most dreadful example in recent history of how far madmen can go when riding the skeletal horse of paranoia, but their example has by no means cured the world.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introduction to Henry Kuttner’s story Don’t Look Now in Isaac Asimov Presents The Golden Years of Science Fiction, Fifth Series (1983) (in the 1985 hardcover reprint), pp. 367-368
“Are there things about the universe that we cannot know in the usual way of observing and measuring, but that we can know in some other way—intuition, revelation, mad insight? If so, how can you know that what you know in these non-knowing ways is really so. Anything you know without knowing, others can know only on your flat statement without any proof other than “I know!”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introduction to J. J. Coupling’s story Period Piece in Isaac Asimov Presents The Golden Years of Science Fiction, Fifth Series (1983), , pp. 523-524
“I get a certain pleasure in knowing that I live not merely in a city but in Manhattan, the center of New York City, a region so unique in many ways that I honestly believe that Earth is divided into halves: Manhattan and non-Manhattan.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Science: Dead Center, in F&SF (April 1983), p. 130
“Consider the most famous pure dystopian tale of modern times, 1984, by George Orwell (1903-1950), published in 1948 (the same year in which Walden Two was published). I consider it an abominably poor book. It made a big hit (in my opinion) only because it rode the tidal wave of cold war sentiment in the United States.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Nowhere!" Asimov's Science Fiction (September 1983)
“Miniaturization doesn't actually make sense unless you miniaturize the very atoms of which matter is composed. Otherwise a tiny brain in a man the size of an insect, composed of normal atoms, is composed of too few atoms for the miniaturized man to be any more intelligent than the ant. Also, miniaturizing atoms is impossible according to the rules of quantum mechanics.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1984 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Omni's Screen Flights/Screen Fantasies (1984) edited by Danny Peary, p. 5
“Titles are an important part of a story and I take considerable care in choosing one. In fact, I cannot start a story until I have chosen a title.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1984 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984), p. 27
“Once you've dissected a joke, you're about where you are when you've dissected a frog. It's dead.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1941 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984), p. 49; comparable to "Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind." — E. B. White,…