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Isaac Asimov Quotes
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Isaac Asimov was a Jewish-American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. He was known for his works of science fiction and popular science. Asimov was a prolific writer, and wrote or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. His books have been published in 9 of the 10 major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification.

Asimov wrote hard science fiction and, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, he was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers during his lifetime. Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation Series; his other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series. The Galactic Empire novels are explicitly set in earlier history of the same fictional universe as the Foundation series. Later, beginning with Foundation's Edge, he linked this distant future to the Robot and Spacer stories, creating a unified "future history" for his stories much like those pioneered by Robert A. Heinlein and previously produced by Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson. He wrote hundreds of short stories, including the social science fiction novelette "Nightfall", which in 1964 was voted by the Science Fiction Writers of America the best short science fiction story of all time. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French.

Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as much nonfiction. Most of his popular science books explain scientific concepts in a historical way, going as far back as possible to a time when the science in question was at its simplest stage. He often provides nationalities, birth dates, and death dates for the scientists he mentions, as well as etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Examples include Guide to Science, the three-volume set Understanding Physics, and Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery, as well as works on astronomy, mathematics, history, William Shakespeare's writing, and chemistry.

Asimov was a long-time member and vice president of Mensa International, albeit reluctantly; he described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs". He took more joy in being president of the American Humanist Association. The asteroid 5020 Asimov, a crater on the planet Mars, a Brooklyn elementary school, and a literary award are named in his honor.

✵ 1920 – 6. April 1992
Isaac Asimov photo
Isaac Asimov: 303 quotes30 likes

Isaac Asimov Quotes

“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

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

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 book Pebble in the Sky

Source: Pebble in the Sky

“The easiest way to solve a problem is to deny it exists.”

Isaac Asimov book The Gods Themselves

Section 3, Chapter 10, p. 236
The Gods Themselves (1972)

““You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason—if you pick the proper postulates. We have ours and Cutie has his.”
“Then let’s get at those postulates in a hurry. The storm’s due tomorrow.”
Powell sighed wearily. “That’s where everything falls down. Postulates are based on assumptions and adhered to by faith. Nothing in the Universe can shake them. I’m going to bed.””

Isaac Asimov book I, Robot

Source: I, Robot (1950), “Reason”, p. 63

“It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.”

Isaac Asimov book Foundation

Part III, The Mayors, section 2
Source: The Foundation series (1951–1993), Foundation (1951)

“All evil is good become cancerous.”

Isaac Asimov

“There is nothing frightening about an eternal dreamless sleep. Surely it is better than eternal torment in Hell and eternal boredom in Heaven.”

Isaac Asimov

“Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.”

Isaac Asimov

“If you're born in a cubicle and grow up in a corridor, and work in a cell, and vacation in a crowded sun-room, then coming up into the open with nothing but sky over you might just give you a nervous breakdown.”

Isaac Asimov book Foundation

Source: Foundation

“We're forever teetering on the brink of the unknowable, and trying to understand what can't be understood.”

Isaac Asimov book The Caves of Steel

Source: The Caves of Steel

“To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.”

Isaac Asimov book Foundation

Part V, The Merchant Princes, section 3
Source: The Foundation series (1951–1993), Foundation (1951)

“There are no happy endings in history, only crisis points that pass.”

Isaac Asimov book The Gods Themselves

Section 3, Chapter 19, p. 287
Source: The Gods Themselves (1972)

“It was childish to feel disappointed, but childishness comes almost as naturally to a man as to a child.”

Isaac Asimov book Foundation

Source: Foundation

“It is the chief characteristic of the religion of science that it works.”

Isaac Asimov book Foundation

Variant: It is remarkable, Hardin, how the religion of science has grabbed hold.
Source: Foundation

“Now any dogma, based primarily on faith and emotionalism, is a dangerous weapon to use on others, since it is almost impossible to guarantee that the weapon will never be turned on the user.”

Isaac Asimov book Foundation

Part V, The Merchant Princes, section 13
Source: The Foundation series (1951–1993), Foundation (1951)

““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.””

Isaac Asimov book I, Robot

“Introduction”, p. 8
Source: I, Robot (1950)

“Of course there are worlds. Millions of them! Every star you see has worlds, and most of those you don't see.”

Isaac Asimov book Pebble in the Sky

Source: Pebble in the Sky

“Any book worth banning is a book worth reading.”

Isaac Asimov

“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.”

Isaac Asimov book Foundation

Source: Foundation

“I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.”

Isaac Asimov

Variant: I do not fear computers. I fear lack of them.

“The most hopelessly stupid man is he who is not aware that he is wise.”

Isaac Asimov book Second Foundation

Source: The Foundation series (1951–1993), Second Foundation (1953), Chapter 8 “Seldon’s Plan”

“It's your fiction that interests me. Your studies of the interplay of human motives and emotion.”

Isaac Asimov book I, Robot

Source: I, Robot

“Writing is a lonely job. Even if a writer socializes regularly, when he gets down to the real business of his life, it is he and his type writer or word processor. No one else is or can be involved in the matter.”

Isaac Asimov

Source: I. Asimov

“It was obvious that bigotry was never a one-way operation, that hatred bred hatred!”

Isaac Asimov book Pebble in the Sky

Source: Pebble in the Sky

“Even as a youngster, though, I could not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presented danger, the solution was ignorance.”

Isaac Asimov book The Caves of Steel

Source: The Caves of Steel

“Nothing has to be true, but everything has to sound true.”

Isaac Asimov

“Q. You do not consider your statement a disloyal one?
A. No, sir. Scientific truth is beyond loyalty and disloyalty.
Q. You are sure that your statement represents scientific truth?
A. I am.”

Isaac Asimov book Foundation

Part I, The Psychohistorians, section 6
Source: The Foundation series (1951–1993), Foundation (1951)

“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.”

Isaac Asimov book Foundation and Empire

Source: Foundation and Empire

“Postulates are based on assumption and adhered to by faith. Nothing in the Universe can shake them.”

Isaac Asimov book I, Robot

Source: I, Robot

“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.”

Isaac Asimov book Forward the Foundation

Source: Forward the Foundation

“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.”

Isaac Asimov

“All normal life, Peter, consciously or otherwise, resent domination. If the domination is by an inferior, or by a supposed inferior, the resentment becomes stronger.”

Isaac Asimov book I, Robot

Source: I, Robot

“The human mind works at low efficiency. Twenty percent is the figure usually given. When, momentarily, there is a flash of greater power, it is termed a hunch, or insight, or intuition.”

Isaac Asimov book Foundation and Empire

Source: Foundation and Empire

“In the presence of total Darkness, the mind finds it absolutely necessary to create light.”

Isaac Asimov

Source: Nightfall One

“Any fool can tell a crisis when it arrives. The real service to the state is to detect it in embryo.”

Isaac Asimov book Foundation

Source: Foundation

“Flattery is useful when dealing with youngsters.”

Isaac Asimov

“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.”

Isaac Asimov book Forward the Foundation

Source: Forward the Foundation

“There is nothing so eternally adhesive as the memory of power.”

Isaac Asimov book I, Robot

“The Evitable Conflict”, p. 189
Source: I, Robot (1950)

“A fire eater must eat fire even if he has to kindle it himself.”

Isaac Asimov book Foundation

Source: The Foundation series (1951–1993), Foundation (1951), Part III, The Mayors, section 9

“Weak emperors mean strong viceroys.”

Isaac Asimov book Foundation

Source: Foundation

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

Isaac Asimov

"How Easy to See the Future", Natural History magazine (April 1975);
General sources

“Aimless extension of knowledge, however, which is what I think you really mean by the term curiosity, is merely inefficiency. I am designed to avoid inefficiency.”

Isaac Asimov book The Caves of Steel

Source: The Caves of Steel