Isaac Asimov citations

Page 3

“Si le savoir peut créer des problèmes, ce n'est pas l'ignorance qui les résoudra.”

“Il y a longtemps que j'ai décidé de suivre une règle stricte : être clair. […] Je me contente d'écrire d'une manière limpide et de créer une relation chaleureuse entre mes lecteurs et moi; quant aux critiques littéraires… eh bien, ils sont libres.”

“La connaissance scientifique possède en quelque sorte des propriétés fractales: nous aurons beau accroître notre savoir”

“Maintenant, reprenons les Trois Lois fondamentales de la Robotique…”

“Ce qui manque aux adolescents, ce n'est ni l'intelligence ni la faculté de raisonner, c'est tout simplement l'expérience.”

“Une "information fausse" est par définition incompatible avec toute autre information connue.”

“On a tendance à nous confondre parce que nous sommes tous deux des auteurs de textes cérébraux où les concepts scientifiques comptent plus que l'action proprement dite.”

“On peut définir la Science-Fiction comme la branche de la littérature qui se soucie des réponses de l'être humain aux progrès de la science et de la technologie.”

“I prefer rationalism to atheism. The question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism, thus you don't have to waste your time in either attacking or defending.”

“They won't listen. Do you know why? Because they have certain fixed notions about the past. Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don't want the truth; they want their traditions.”

“Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.”

“People think of education as something they can finish.”

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

“My feeling is, quite simply, that if there is a God, He has done such a bad job
that he isn't worth discussing.”

“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.”

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

““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.””

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

“All the hundreds of millions of people who, in their time, believed the Earth was flat never succeeded in unrounding it by an inch.”

“All evil is good become cancerous.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“The first step in making rabbit stew is catching the rabbit.”

“The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing.”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“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.”

““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.””

“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.”

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

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

“Society is much more easily soothed than one's own conscience.”