Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) was a renowned American author, biochemist, and professor known for his prolific contributions to science fiction and popular science writing. Born in Russia, he immigrated to the United States as a child. Asimov authored over 500 books and numerous short stories, exploring themes of robotics, human relationships, and societal futures. His notable series include “Foundation” and “Robot.” Alongside his fiction, Asimov, a biochemistry professor, wrote extensively on science topics, making complex concepts accessible to a broad audience. His impact on science fiction and science communication endures, cementing his legacy as one of the most influential figures in both fields. Asimov passed away on April 6, 1992.
Isaac Asimov Quotes
1. “People think of education as something they can finish.”
— Isaac Asimov
2. “Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.”
— Isaac Asimov
3. “However, I continue to try and I continue, indefatigably, to reach out. There’s no way I can single-handedly save the world or, perhaps, even make a perceptible difference – but how ashamed I would be to let a day pass without making one more effort.”
— Isaac Asimov
4. “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
— Isaac Asimov
5. “The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
— Isaac Asimov
6. “The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing.”
— Isaac Asimov
7. “Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.”
— Isaac Asimov
8. “Today’s science fiction is tomorrow’s science fact.”
— Isaac Asimov
9. “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”
— Isaac Asimov
10. “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not “Eureka!” but ‘That’s funny…’”
— Isaac Asimov
11. “Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.”
— Isaac Asimov
12. “In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.”
— Isaac Asimov
13. “All you have to do is take a close look at yourself and you will understand everyone else.”
— Isaac Asimov
14. “Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”
— Isaac Asimov
15. “I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.”
— Isaac Asimov
16. “Intelligence is an accident of evolution, and not necessarily an advantage.”
— Isaac Asimov
17. “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
18. “It’s the writing that teaches you.”
— Isaac Asimov
19. “If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.”
— Isaac Asimov
20. “Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.”
— Isaac Asimov
21. “When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent.”
— Isaac Asimov
22. “Any book worth banning is a book worth reading.”
— Isaac Asimov
23. “The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
— Isaac Asimov
24. “Any planet is ‘Earth’ to those that live on it.”
— Isaac Asimov
25. “Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.”
— Isaac Asimov
26. “I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.”
— Isaac Asimov
27. “The intelligent man is never bored.”
— Isaac Asimov
28. “There are no nations! There is only humanity. And if we don’t come to understand that right soon, there will be no nations, because there will be no humanity.”
— Isaac Asimov
29. “The day you stop learning is the day you begin decaying.”
— Isaac Asimov
30. “There is an art to science, and a science in art; the two are not enemies, but different aspects of the whole.”
— Isaac Asimov
31. “Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world.”
— Isaac Asimov
32. “I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.”
— Isaac Asimov
33. “Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.”
— Isaac Asimov
34. “There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.”
— Isaac Asimov
35. “The law of conservation of energy tells us we can’t get something for nothing, but we refuse to believe it.”
— Isaac Asimov
36. “The first step in making rabbit stew is catching the rabbit.”
— Isaac Asimov
37. “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
38. “If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.”
— Isaac Asimov
39. “It is the writer who might catch the imagination of young people, and plant a seed that will flower and come to fruition.”
— Isaac Asimov
40. “Whenever I have endured or accomplished some difficult task – such as watching television, going out socially or sleeping – I always look forward to rewarding myself with the small pleasure of getting back to my typewriter and writing something.”
— Isaac Asimov
41. “Maybe happiness is this: not feeling like you should be elsewhere, doing something else, being someone else.”
— Isaac Asimov
42. “Self-education is a continuing source of pleasure to me, for the more I know, the fuller my life is and the better I appreciate my own existence.”
— Isaac Asimov
43. “Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”
— Isaac Asimov
44. “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.”
— Isaac Asimov
45. “Economics is on the side of humanity now.”
— Isaac Asimov
46. “A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.”
— Isaac Asimov
47. “The greatest weapons in the conquest of knowledge are an understanding mind and the inexorable curiosity that drives it on.”
— Isaac Asimov
48. “Any teacher that can be replaced by a computer should be replaced by a computer.”
— Isaac Asimov
49. “Science does not promise absolute truth, nor does it consider that such a thing necessarily exists. Science does not even promise that everything in the Universe is amenable to the scientific process.”
— Isaac Asimov
50. “To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.”
— Isaac Asimov
51. “If all human beings understood history, they might cease making the same stupid mistakes over and over.”
— Isaac Asimov
52. “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
53. “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
54. “Life is a journey, but don’t worry, you’ll find a parking spot at the end.”
— Isaac Asimov
55. “To make discoveries, you have to be curious about why the universe is the way it is.”
— Isaac Asimov
56. “The final end of Eternity, and the beginning of Infinity.”
— Isaac Asimov
57. “It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.”
— Isaac Asimov
58. “So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You’d better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can’t rearrange the universe.”
— Isaac Asimov
59. “There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.”
— Isaac Asimov
60. “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
61. “The great secret of the successful fool is that he’s no fool at all.”
— Isaac Asimov
62. “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
63. “Never judge your own writing. You’re not fit to do so.”
— Isaac Asimov
64. “And in man is a three-pound brain which, as far as we know, is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter in the universe.”
— Isaac Asimov
65. “The false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
— Isaac Asimov
66. “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 unforeseen catastrophes.”
— Isaac Asimov
67. “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
68. “My feeling is that as far as creativity is concerned, isolation is required. Creation is embarrassing. For every new good idea you have, there are a hundred, ten thousand foolish ones.”
— Isaac Asimov
69. “There are so many benefits to be derived from space exploration and exploitation; why not take what seems to me the only chance of escaping what is otherwise the sure destruction of all that humanity has struggled to achieve for 50,000 years?”
— Isaac Asimov
70. “All roads lead to Trantor, and that is where all stars end.”
— Isaac Asimov
71. “We are reaching the stage where the problems we must solve are going to become insoluble without computers. I do not fear computers, I fear the lack of them.”
— Isaac Asimov
72. “The human brain, then, is the most complicated organization of matter that we know.”
— Isaac Asimov
73. “There are no happy endings in history, only crisis points that pass.”
— Isaac Asimov
74. “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
75. “Working ten hour days allows you to fall behind twice as fast as you could working five hour days.”
— Isaac Asimov
76. “Happiness is doing it rotten your own way.”
— Isaac Asimov
77. “The first law of dietetics seems to be: if it tastes good, it’s bad for you.”
— Isaac Asimov
78. “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
79. “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.”
— Isaac Asimov
80. “Man’s greatest asset is the unsettled mind.”
— Isaac Asimov
81. “Life originated in the sea, and about eighty percent of it is still there.”
— Isaac Asimov
82. “The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.”
— Isaac Asimov
83. “It is the obvious which is so difficult to see most of the time. People say ‘It’s as plain as the nose on your face.’ But how much of the nose on your face can you see, unless someone holds a mirror up to you?”
— Isaac Asimov
84. “Creationists make it sound as though a ‘theory’ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.”
— Isaac Asimov
85. “Democracy cannot survive overpopulation.”
— Isaac Asimov
86. “A neat and orderly laboratory is unlikely. It is, after all, so much a place of false starts and multiple attempts.”
— Isaac Asimov
87. “Words are a pretty fuzzy substitute for mathematical equations.”
— Isaac Asimov
88. “The dangers that face the world can, every one of them, be traced back to science. The salvations that may save the world will, every one of them, be traced back to science.”
— Isaac Asimov
89. “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
90. “I don’t like anything that’s got to be. I want to know why.”
— Isaac Asimov
91. “If you ask for too much, you lose even that which you have.”
— Isaac Asimov
92. “It was childish to feel disappointed, but childishness comes almost as naturally to a man as to a child.”
— Isaac Asimov
93. “I don’t believe in extraordinary concatenations of coincidence.”
— Isaac Asimov
94. “Before another century is done it will be hard for people to imagine a time when humanity was confined to one world, and it will seem to them incredible that there was ever anybody who doubted the value of space and wanted to turn his or her back on the Universe.”
— Isaac Asimov
95. “In theory, there is nothing the computer can do that the human mind can not do. The computer merely takes a finite amount of data and performs a finite number of operations upon them. The human mind can duplicate the process.”
— Isaac Asimov
96. “Humanity is cutting down its forests, apparently oblivious to the fact that we may not be able to live without them.”
— Isaac Asimov
97. “A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.”
— Isaac Asimov
98. “The Master created humans first as the lowest type, most easily formed. Gradually, he replaced them by robots, the next higher step, and finally he created me, to take the place of the last humans.”
— Isaac Asimov
99. “Society is much more easily soothed than one’s own conscience.”
— Isaac Asimov
100. “Life is glorious when it is happy; days are carefree when they are happy; the interplay of thought and imagination is far superior to that of muscle and sinew.”
— Isaac Asimov
101. “You don’t have to be able to lay eggs to know when one of them is rotten.”
— Isaac Asimov
102. “The easiest way to solve a problem is to deny it exists.”
— Isaac Asimov
103. “Naturally, there’s got to be a limit for I don’t expect to live forever, but I do intend to hang on as long as possible.”
— Isaac Asimov
104. “I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.”
— Isaac Asimov
105. “The closer to the truth, the better the lie, and the truth itself, when it can be used, is the best lie.”
— Isaac Asimov
106. “The advance of genetic engineering makes it quite conceivable that we will begin to design our own evolutionary progress.”
— Isaac Asimov
107. “It’s humbling to think that all animals, including human beings, are parasites of the plant world.”
— Isaac Asimov
108. “You can’t assert an answer just because it’s not something else.”
— Isaac Asimov
109. “No one can possibly have lived through the Great Depression without being scarred by it. No amount of experience since the depression can convince someone who has lived through it that the world is safe economically.”
— Isaac Asimov
110. “All life is nucleic acid; the rest is commentary.”
— Isaac Asimov
111. “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
112. “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
113. “There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.”
— Isaac Asimov
114. “Any fool can tell a crisis when it arrives. The real service to the state is to detect it in embryo.”
— Isaac Asimov
115. “Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket.”
— Isaac Asimov
116. “Science is a set of rules to keep us from telling lies to each other. All scientists really have is a reputation for telling the truth.”
— Isaac Asimov
117. “I don’t subscribe to the thesis, ‘Let the buyer beware,’ I prefer the disregarded one that goes, ‘Let the seller be honest.’”
— Isaac Asimov
118. “The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers.”
— Isaac Asimov
119. “You show me someone who can’t understand people and I’ll show you someone who has built up a false image of himself.”
— Isaac Asimov
120. “When I die I won’t go to heaven or hell; there will just be nothingness.”
— Isaac Asimov
121. “You are never too old to learn more than you already know and to become able to do more than you already can.”
— Isaac Asimov
122. “You wait for the war to happen like vultures. If you want to help, prevent the war. Don’t save the remnants. Save them all.”
— Isaac Asimov
123. “Oh, for a pin that would puncture pretension!”
— Isaac Asimov
124. “If we only obey those rules that we think are just and reasonable, then no rule will stand, for there is no rule that some will not think is unjust and unreasonable.”
— Isaac Asimov
125. “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
126. “Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete.”
— Isaac Asimov
127. “Unfortunately, in many cases, people who write science fiction violate the laws of nature, not because they want to make a point, but because they don’t know what the laws of nature are.”
— Isaac Asimov
128. “If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success – but only if you persist.”
— Isaac Asimov
129. “Experimentation is the least arrogant method of gaining knowledge. The experimenter humbly asks a question of nature.”
— Isaac Asimov
130. “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
131. “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
132. “It’s just science fiction so it’s allowed to be silly, and childish, and stupid. It’s just science fiction, so it doesn’t have to make sense. It’s just science fiction, so you must ask nothing more of it than loud noises and flashing lights.”
— Isaac Asimov
133. “Finished products are for decadent minds.”
— Isaac Asimov
134. “It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.”
— Isaac Asimov
135. “It is well-known that the friend of a conqueror is but the last victim.”
— Isaac Asimov
136. “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
137. “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
138. “Nothing has to be true, but everything has to sound true.”
— Isaac Asimov
139. “Even as a youngster, though, I could not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presented danger, the solution was ignorance. To me, it always seemed that the solution had to be wisdom. You did not refuse to look at danger, rather you learned how to handle it safely.”
— Isaac Asimov
140. “Every religion seems like a fantasy to outsiders, but as holy truth to those of the faith.”
— Isaac Asimov
141. “No vision of God and heaven ever experienced by the most exalted prophet can, in my opinion, match the vision of the universe as seen by Newton or Einstein.”
— Isaac Asimov
142. “Scientists derive satisfaction from figuring out the puzzle. It’s about the quest, not the grail.”
— Isaac Asimov
143. “Surely no child, and few adults, have ever watched a bird in flight without envy.”
— Isaac Asimov
144. “Human beings sometimes find a kind of pleasure in nursing painful emotions, in blaming themselves without reason or even against reason.”
— Isaac Asimov
145. “Having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be.”
— Isaac Asimov
146. “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.”
— Isaac Asimov
147. “Psychohistory was the quintessence of sociology; it was the science of human behavior reduced to mathematical equations. The individual human being is unpredictable, but the reactions of human mobs, Seldon found, could be treated statistically.”
— Isaac Asimov
148. “The Earth should not be cut up into hundreds of different sections, each inhabited by a self-defined segment of humanity that considers its own welfare and its own “national security” to be paramount above all other consideration.”
— Isaac Asimov
149. “I type 90 words per minute on the typewriter; I type 100 words per minute on the word processor. But, of course, I don’t keep that up indefinitely – every once in a while I do have to think a few seconds.”
— Isaac Asimov
150. “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
