Science Authors

"Just you think first, and don't bother to speak afterward, either."

"The unwritten motto of United States Robot and Mechanical Men Corp. was well-known: “No employee makes the same mistake twice. He is fired the first time.”"

"“You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason—if you pick the proper postulates. We have ours and Cutie [robot QT-1] 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 accept nothing on authority. A hypothesis must be backed by reason, or else it is worthless."

"There's nothing like deduction. We've determined everything about our problem but the solution."

"“Nonsense,” Weston denied, with an involuntary nervous shiver. “That’s completely ridiculous. We had a long discussion at the time we bought Robbie about the First Law of Robotics. You know that it is impossible for a robot to harm a human being; that long before enough can go wrong to alter that First Law, a robot would be completely inoperable. It’s a mathematical impossibility. Besides I have an engineer from U.S. Robots here twice a year to give the poor gadget a complete overhaul. Why, there’s no more chance of anything at all going wrong with Robbie than there is of you or I suddenly going looney—considerably less, in fact.”"

"“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.”"

"“Nobody in the government,” said Edwards stubbornly, “seems to care whether we reach the bottom of the matter or not.” “I’ve already explained that there have been no consequences but good ones. Why stir the mud at the bottom, when the water above is clear?”"

"It built itself up endlessly, like a chess game, and the telemetrists began to use a computer to program the computer that designed the program for the computer that programmed the robot-controlling computer."

"“Curing diabetes is just a detail and it will merely mean that the death rate will go down slightly and produce just a bit more pressure in the direction of population increase. I’m not interested in achieving that.” “You don’t value human life?” “Not infinitely. There are too many people on earth.” “I know that some think so.” “You’re one of them, Mr. Secretary. You have written articles saying so. And it’s obvious to any thinking man—to you more than anyone—what it’s doing. Overpopulation means discomfort, and to reduce the discomfort private choice must disappear. Crowd enough people into a field and the only way they can all sit down is for all to sit down at the same time. Make a mob dense enough and they can move from one point to another quickly only by marching in formation. That is what men are becoming; a blindly marching mob knowing nothing about where it is going or why.”"

"“That’s The Goose,” he said. The way he said it, I could hear the capitals. I stared at it. It looked like any other goose, fat, self-satisfied and short-tempered."

"It’s funny the respectable names you can give to superstition."

"It is no one’s privilege to despise another. It is only a hard-won right after long experience."

"Look around you. Look at the planet, Earth. What kind of a ridiculous animal are we to be lords of the world after the dinosaurs had failed? Sure, we’re intelligent, but what’s intelligence? We think it is important because we have it. If the Tyrannosaurus could have picked out the one quality that he thought would ensure species domination, it would be size and strength. And he would make a better case for it. He lasted longer than we are likely to."

"Psychiatry is becoming too popular. Everybody talks of complexes and neuroses and psychoses and compulsions and whatnot. One man’s guilt complex is another man’s good night’s sleep."

"“You are an important man–” Ralston snorted. “You do not consider that to be so?” asked Blaustein. “No, I don’t. There are no important men, any more than there are important individual bacteria.” “I don’t understand.” “I don’t expect you to.”"

"The newsmen were writing down sentences busily as Hoskins spoke to them. They did not understand and they were sure their readers would not, but it sounded scientific and that was what counted."

"“If you can see the future –” “Why am I not the richest man on earth? Is that it? But I am rich—in all I want. You want recognition and I want to be left alone. I do my work. No one bothers me. That makes me a billionaire.”"

"I don’t say it was deliberate fraud. He was probably madly sincere, and sincerely mad."

"Printing will tell you such useful things and such interesting things that not being able to read would be as bad as not being able to see."

"“Why didn’t people just use a computer?” “That was before they had computers,” cried Paul. “Before?” “Sure. Do you think people always had computers? Didn’t you ever hear of cavemen?”"

"The Dantean conceptions of Inferno were childish and unworthy of the Divine imagination: fire and torture. Boredom is much more subtle. The inner torture of a mind unable to escape itself in any way, condemned to fester in its own exuding mental pus for all time, is much more fitting. Oh, yes, my friend, we have been judged, and condemned, too, and this is not Heaven, but hell."

"We face eternity now. We have no universe left, no outside phenomena, no emotions, no passions. Nothing but ourselves and thought. We face an eternity of introspection, when all through history we have never known what to do with ourselves on a rainy Sunday."

"“Surely you believe in God?” “Well, said R.E., “I believed a lot of things about Him that would probably startle you.”"

"He could almost wish he were superstitious. He could then console himself with the thought that the casual meaningless meeting had really been directed by a knowing and purposeful Fate."

"“Arrange for the statue to come to life while we are watching, and make sure that it is terribly in love with Elderberry.” “Love is easy. That’s just a matter of adjusting hormones.”"

"“He seemed so pleasant, so friendly, so grateful for little favors. How could I know that underneath it all he was a vicious, libelous hellhound.” George said, “But he was a critic. How could he be anything else? You train for the post by maligning your mother.”"

"“You clearly know nothing at all about economics, old fellow.” “Neither do economists, George,” I said."

"“An accent?” “Substandard English. Foreigners who have not learned the language as infants but who pick it up in later life invariably mispronounce the vowels, miss out on word order, break up the grammar, and so on.” A look of sheer horror crossed Azazel’s tiny face. “But that’s a capital offense,” he said. “Not on this world,” I said. “It should be, but it isn’t.”"

"“The evil drink does,” said George, with a heavily alcoholic sigh, “would be hard to assess.” “Not if you were sober,” I said."

"What a human being believes, however, no matter with what ardor, is not necessarily objective truth."

"Self-preservation has frequently knuckled under to that tremendous yearning to ‘get even.’"

"Modesty is an unnatural attitude, and one which is only with difficulty taught to children."

"“Things in the past always seem greater.” Brand condescended with a smile. “There is a theorem to that effect which you’ll find in any elementary text. Freshmen invariably call it the ‘GOD Theorem.’ Stands for ‘Good-Old-Days,’ you know. But go on.” Theor frowned at the digression. He hid the beginning of a sneer. “You can always dismiss an uncomfortable fact by pinning a dowdy label to it.”"

"“But you really are, you know.” This was said with intense earnestness. “I mean good, really good. I think it is wonderful to be an author like you. It must be almost like being God.” Graham stared blankly. “Not to editors, sister.” Sister didn’t get the whisper. She continued, “To be able to create living characters out of nothing; to unfold souls to all the world; to put thoughts into words; to build pictures and create worlds. I have often thought that an author was the most gloriously gifted person in all creation. Better an inspired author starving in a garret than a king upon his throne. Don’t you think so?” “Definitely,” lied Graham."

"Earth governments in moments of stress are not famous for being reasonable."

"If the love of money is the root of all evil, the need of money is most certainly the root of all despair."

"A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm."

"A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws."

"A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law."

"A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm."

"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."

"If you suspect that my interest in the Bible is going to inspire me with sudden enthusiasm for Judaism and make me a convert of mountain‐moving fervor and that I shall suddenly grow long earlocks and learn Hebrew and go about denouncing the heathen — you little know the effect of the Bible on me. Properly read, it is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived."

"I was once being interviewed by Barbara Walters [...] In between two of the segments she asked me [...] "But what would you do if the doctor gave you only six months to live?" I said, "Type faster." This was widely quoted, but the "six months" was changed to "six minutes," which bothered me. It's "six months.""

"In the course of my fight with the school, I couldn't help but notice that I became a pariah. [...] Once, however, a fellow faculty member, making sure we were unobserved, said to me, "Isaac, the faculty is proud of you for your courage in fighting the administration for academic freedom." I said, "There's no courage involved in it. Don't you know my definition of academic freedom?" "No. What's your definition of academic freedom?" I said, "Independent income.""

"Someone once asked me, "If you had your choice, Dr. Asimov, would it be women or writing?" My answer was, "Well, I can write for twelve hours at a time without getting tired.""

"Ideas are cheap. It's only what you do with them that counts."

"The job of science will never be done, it will just sink deeper and deeper into never-ending complexity."

"It's my belief that the Universe possesses, in its essence, fractal properties of a very complex sort and that the pursuit of science shares those properties. It follows that any part of the Universe that remains un-understood, and any part of scientific investigation that remains unresolved, however small that might be in comparison to what is understood and resolved, contains within it all the complexity of the original. Therefore, we'll never finish. No matter how far we go, the road ahead will be as long as it was at the start, and that's the secret of the Universe."

"Scientific theories can always be improved and are improved. That is one of the glories of science. It is the authoritarian view of the Universe that is frozen in stone and cannot be changed, so that once it is wrong, it is wrong forever."