"THE QUOTE VAULT"

A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.
Isaac Asimov

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.
Isaac Asimov

And above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning.
Isaac Asimov

Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
Isaac Asimov

Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.
Isaac Asimov

From my close observation of writers...they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.
Isaac Asimov

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.
Isaac Asimov

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.
Isaac Asimov

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.
Isaac Asimov

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
Isaac Asimov

I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.
Isaac Asimov

I don't believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books.
Isaac Asimov

I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.
Isaac Asimov

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.
Isaac Asimov

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.
Isaac Asimov

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 has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.
Isaac Asimov

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.
Isaac Asimov

It is not only the living who are killed in war.
Isaac Asimov

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.
Isaac Asimov

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.
Isaac Asimov

John Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.
Isaac Asimov

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.
Isaac Asimov

Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all time low over the world.
Isaac Asimov

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

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what's right.
Isaac Asimov

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.
Isaac Asimov

Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put on an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up. Well, maybe once.
Isaac Asimov

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.
Isaac Asimov

Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.
Isaac Asimov

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.
Isaac Asimov

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know - and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.
Isaac Asimov

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
Isaac Asimov

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
Isaac Asimov

There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.
Isaac Asimov

Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Isaac Asimov

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

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.
Isaac Asimov

To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.
Isaac Asimov

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Isaac Asimov

"Destiny is an absolutely definite and inexorable ruler. Physical ability and moral determination count for nothing. It is impossible to perform the simplest act when the gods say "no." I have no idea how they bring pressure to bear on such occasions; I only know that it is irresistible."

"I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning."

"I was asked to memorise what I did not understand; and, my memory being so good, it refused to be insulted in that manner."

"The conscience of the world is so guilty that it always assumes that people who investigate heresies must be heretics; just as if a doctor who studies leprosy must be a leper. Indeed, it is only recently that science has been allowed to study anything without reproach."

"The pious pretense that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing."

"To the eyes of a god, mankind must appear as a species of bacteria which multiply and become progressively virulent whenever they find themselves in a congenial culture, and whose activity diminishes until they disappear completely as soon as proper measures are taken to sterilize them."

"A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist."

"By 2000, politics will simply fade away. We will not see any political parties."

"Don't fight forces, use them."

"Great nations are simply the operating fronts of behind-the-scenes, vastly ambitious individuals who had become so effectively powerful because of their ability to remain invisible while operating behind the national scenery."

"Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons."

"I am convinced all of humanity is born with more gifts than we know. Most are born geniuses and just get de-geniused rapidly."

"I look for what needs to be done. After all, that's how the universe designs itself."

"I'm not a genius. I'm just a tremendous bundle of experience."



"Most of my advances were by mistake. You uncover what is when you get rid of what isn't."

"Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment."

"Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable."

"Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering."

"The earth is like a spaceship that didn't come with an operating manual."

"The pyramids, attached with age, have forgotten the names of their founders."

"There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly."

"To expose a 4.2 trillion dollar ripoff of the American people by the stockholders of the 1000 largest corporations over the last one-hundred years will be a tall order of business."

"War is the ultimate tool of politics."

"We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims."

"We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody."

"What usually happens in the educational process is that the faculties are dulled, overloaded, stuffed and paralyzed so that by the time most people are mature they have lost their innate capabilities."

"Adventure upon all the tickets in the lottery, and you lose for certain; and the greater the number of your tickets the nearer your approach to this certainty."

"As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce."

"Defense is superior to opulence."

"Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man."

"Labour was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased."

"On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity."

"Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition."

"The robot is going to lose. Not by much. But when the final score is tallied, flesh and blood is going to beat the damn monster."

"The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so, generation after generation, through all changes of opinion and detail, is the one that must rule all observation."

"This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts."

"What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?"