The first law of dietetics seems to be: If it tastes good, it’s bad for you.
– Isaac Asimov
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
– Isaac Asimov
Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.
– Isaac Asimov
If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the
basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer
an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God and
whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.
– Isaac Asimov
If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.
– Isaac Asimov
You don’t need to predict the future. Just choose a future – a good future, a useful future –
and make the kind of prediction that will alter human emotions and reactions in such a way
that the future you predicted will be brought about. Better to make a good future than
predict a bad one.
– Isaac Asimov
Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.
– Isaac Asimov
The cure for advanced gullibility is to go to sleep and consider matters again the next day.
– 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
It is well-known that the friend of a conqueror is but the last victim.
– 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
I write for the same reason I breathe… because if I didn’t, I would die.
– Isaac Asimov
It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.
– Isaac Asimov
Knowledge is indivisible. When people grow wise in one direction, they are sure to make it
easier for themselves to grow wise in other directions as well. On the other hand, when they
split up knowledge, concentrate on their own field, and scorn and ignore other fields, they
grow less wise – even in their own field.
– Isaac Asimov
My feeling is, quite simply, that if there is a God, He has done such a bad job that he isn’t
worth discussing.
– Isaac Asimov
There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend
it to the death.
– Isaac Asimov
The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing.
– Isaac Asimov
Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics,
philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.
– Isaac Asimov
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.
– Isaac Asimov
If I am right, then (religious fundamentalists) will not go to Heaven, because there is no
Heaven. If they are right, then they will not go to Heaven, because they are hypocrites.
– Isaac Asimov
Creationists make it sound as though a “theory” is something you dreamt up after being drunk
all night.
– Isaac Asimov
Custom is second nature. Be accustomed to a bald head, sufficiently accustomed, and hair on
it would seem monstrous.
– Isaac Asimov
I discovered, to my amazement, that all through history there had been resistance… and
bitter, exaggerated, last-stitch resistance… to every significant technological change that
had taken place on earth. Usually the resistance came from those groups who stood to lose
influence, status, money… as a result of the change.
– Isaac Asimov
Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
– Isaac Asimov
I feel that the longest and worst punishment should be reserved for those who slandered God
by inventing hell.
– Isaac Asimov
Oh, for a pin that would puncture pretension!
– Isaac Asimov, Buy Jupiter and Other Stories
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not
“Eureka!” (I found it!) but “That’s funny…”
– Isaac Asimov
An atom-blaster is a good weapon, but it can point both ways.
– Isaac Asimov
Anything you make forbidden gains sexual attractiveness. Would you be particularly interested
in women’s breasts if you lived in a society in which they were displayed at all times?
– 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…. This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our
businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.
– Isaac Asimov
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
In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.
– Isaac Asimov
Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.
– Isaac Asimov
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always 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
Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what’s right.
– Isaac Asimov
I wish that I could say I was optimistic about the human race. I love us all, but we are so
stupid and shortsighted that I wonder if we can lift our eyes to the world about us long
enough not to commit suicide.
– Isaac Asimov
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
– Isaac Asimov
If all human beings understood history, they might cease making the same stupid mistakes
over and over.
– Isaac Asimov
Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may
be inevitable, solutions are not.
– Isaac Asimov
Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.
– Isaac Asimov
The vast majority, who believe in astrology and think that the planets have nothing better to
do than form a code that will tell them whether tomorrow is a good day to close a business
deal or not, become all the more excited and enthusiastic about the bilge when a group of
astronomers denounces it.
– Isaac Asimov
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society
gathers wisdom.
– 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
The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does
not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes
leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.
– Isaac Asimov
There are limits beyond which your folly will not carry you. I am glad of that. In fact, I am
relieved.
– Isaac Asimov
All the hundreds of millions of people who, in their time, believed the Earth was flat never
succeeded in unrounding it by an inch.
– Isaac Asimov
Once, when a religionist denounced me in unmeasured terms, I sent him a card saying, “I am
sure you believe that I will go to hell when I die, and that once there I will suffer all the pains
and tortures the sadistic ingenuity of your deity can devise and that this torture will continue
forever. Isn’t that enough for you? Do you have to call me bad names in addition?”
– Isaac Asimov
What is really amazing, and frustrating, is mankind’s habit of refusing to see the obvious and
inevitable until it is there, and then muttering about unforseen catastrophes.
– Isaac Asimov
I’ll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder
and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to
be.
– Isaac Asimov
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.
– Isaac Asimov
A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths
of great value.
– Isaac Asimov