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And [asimov]'ll Sign Anything, Hardbacks, Softbacks, Other People's Books, Scraps Of Paper. Inevitably Someone Handed Him A Blank Check On The Occasion When I Was There, And He Signed That Without As Much As A Waver To His Smile — Except That He Signed: 'harlan Ellison.

-Isaac Asimov

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And [asimov]'ll Sign Anything,

Isaac Asimov

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And [asimov]'ll Sign Anything, Hardbacks, Softbacks, Other People's Books, Scraps Of Paper. Inevitably Someone Handed Him A Blank Check On The Occasion When I Was There, And He Signed That Without As Much As A Waver To His Smile — Except That He Signed: 'harlan Ellison.

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I Received The Fundamentals Of My Education In School, But That Was Not Enough. My Real Education, The Superstructure, The Details, The True Architecture, I Got Out Of The Public Library.

When Life Is So Harsh That A Man Loses All Hope In Himself, Then He Raises His Eyes To A Shining Rock, Worshipping It, Just To Find Hope Again, Rather Than Looking To His Own Acts For Hope And Salvation. Yes, Atheism Is A Redemptive Belief. It Is Theism That Denies Man's Own Redemptive Nature.

When Stupidity Is Considered Patriotism, It Is Unsafe To Be Intelligent.

Never Let Your Sense Of Morals Get In The Way Of Doing What's Right.

Happiness Is Doing It Rotten Your Own Way.

The Important Prediction Is Not The Automobile, But The Parking Problem; Not Radio, But The Soap Opera; Not The Income Tax, But The Expense Account; Not The Bomb, But The Nuclear Stalemate

Writing, To Me, Is Simply Thinking Through My Fingers.

Human Beings Sometimes Find A Kind Of Pleasure In Nursing Painful Emotions, In Blaming Themselves Without Reason Or Even Against Reason.

Intelligence Is An Accident Of Evolution, And Not Necessarily An Advantage.

It's Humbling To Think That All Animals, Including Human Beings, Are Parasites Of The Plant World.

All You Have To Do Is Take A Close Look At Yourself And You Will Understand Everyone Else.

Look At Yourself

Now Remember, Kids, The Internet Is Serious Business.

Serious Business

Custom Is Second Nature. Be Accustomed To A Bald Head, Sufficiently Accustomed, And Hair On It Would Seem Monstrous.

Any Teacher That Can Be Replaced By A Computer Should Be Replaced By A Computer.

It Is Precisely Because It Is Fashionable For Americans To Know No Science, Even Though They May Be Well Educated Otherwise, That They So Easily Fall Prey To Nonsense.

Why Continue? Because We Must. Because We Have The Call. Because It Is Nobler To Fight For Rationality Without Winning Than To Give Up In The Face Of Continued Defeats. Because Whatever True Progress Humanity Makes Is Through The Rationality Of The Occasional Individual And Because Any One Individual We May Win For The Cause May Do More For Humanity Than A Hundred Thousand Who Hug Their Superstitions To Their Breast.

It Has Always Been My Ambition To Die In Harness With My Head Face Down On A Keyboard And My Nose Caught Between Two Of The Keys.

The True Delight Is In The Finding Out Rather Than In The Knowing.

It Is In Meeting The Great Tests That Mankind Can Most Successfully Rise To Great Heights. Out Of Danger And Restless Insecurity Comes The Force That Pushes Mankind To Newer And Loftier Conquests.

There Is Nothing Frightening About An Eternal Dreamless Sleep. Surely It Is Better Than Eternal Torment In Hell And Eternal Boredom In Heaven.

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.

Scientists Derive Satisfaction From Figuring Out The Puzzle. It's About The Quest, Not The Grail.

A Myth Or Legend Is Simply Not Made Up Out Of A Vacuum. Nothing Is--or Can Be. Somehow There Is A Kernel Of Truth Behind It, However Distorted That Might Be.

It Is The Writer Who Might Catch The Imagination Of Young People, And Plant A Seed That Will Flower And Come To Fruition.

It Was Easy To Cover Up Ignorance By The Mystical Word "intuition.

Humanists Recognize That It Is Only When People Feel Free To Think For Themselves, Using Reason As Their Guide, That They Are Best Capable Of Developing Values That Succeed In Satisfying Human Needs And Serving Human Interests.

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.

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. Although They Never Advanced This As Their Reason For Resisting It. It Was Always The Good Of Humanity That Rested Upon Their Hearts.

Technological Change

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.

If You Ask For Too Much, You Lose Even That Which You Have.

A Good Question Is, Of Course, The Key By Which Infinite Answers Can Be Educed.

Where Is The World Whose People Don't Prefer A Comfortable, Warm, And Well-worn Belief, However Illogical, To The Chilly Winds Of Uncertainty.

To All My Gentle Readers Who Have Treated Me With Love For Over 30 Years, I Must Say Farewell. It Has Always Been My Ambition To Die In Harness With My Head Face Down On A Keyboard And My Nose Caught Between Two Of The Keys, But That's Not The Way It Worked Out. I Have Had A Long And Happy Life And I Have No Complaints About The Ending, Thereof, And So Farewell - Farewell.

To Test A Perfect Theory With Imperfect Instruments Did Not Impress The Greek Philosophers As A Valid Way To Gain Knowledge.

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.

People Think Of Education As Something That They Can Finish.

The Bible Must Be Seen In A Cultural Context. It Didn't Just Happen. These Stories Are Retreads. But, Tell A Christian That -- No, No! What Makes It Doubly Sad Is That They Hardly Know The Book, Much Less Its Origins.

Maybe Happiness Is This: Not Feeling Like You Should Be Elsewhere, Doing Something Else, Being Someone Else.

On Earth, We Are Unmanned By Our Longing For A Pastoral Past That Never Really Existed; And That, If It Had Existed, Could Never Exist Again...on The Moon, There Is No Past To Long For Or Dream About. There Is No Direction But Forward.

The Advance Of Genetic Engineering Makes It Quite Conceivable That We Will Begin To Design Our Own Evolutionary Progress.

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.

Uncertainty That Comes From Knowledge (knowing What You Don't Know) Is Different From Uncertainty Coming From Ignorance.

When Asked For Advice By Beginners. Know Your Ending, I Say, Or The River Of Your Story May Finally Sink Into The Desert Sands And Never Reach The Sea.

The Saddest Aspect Of Life Right Now Is That Science Gathers Knowledge Faster Than Society Gathers Wisdom.

The Tyranny That Now Exists Is Actual. That Which May Exist In The Future Is Potential. If We Are Always To Draw Back From Change With The Thought That The Change May Be For The Worse, Then There Is No Hope At All Of Ever Escaping Injustice.

Politically Popular Speech Has Always Been Protected: Even The Jews Were Free To Say ‘heil Hitler.’

I'm Gradually Managing To Cram My Mind More And More Full Of Things. I've Got This Beautiful Mind And It's Going To Die, And It'll All Be Gone. And Then I Say, Not In My Case. Every Idea I've Ever Had I've Written Down, And It's All There On Paper. And I Won't Be Gone; It'll Be There.

Why ... Did So Many People Spend Their Lives Not Trying To Find Answers To Questions -- Not Even Thinking Of Questions To Begin With? Was There Anything More Exciting In Life Than Seeking Answers?

Fertility Is Hereditary. If Your Parents Didn't Have Any Children, Neither Will You. I Do Not Fear Computers. I Fear The Lack Of Them.

The Earth Faces Environmental Problems Right Now That Threaten The Imminent Destruction Of Civilization And The End Of The Planet As A Livable World. Humanity Cannot Afford To Waste Its Financial And Emotional Resources On Endless, Meaningless Quarrels Between Each Group And All Others. There Must Be A Sense Of Globalism In Which The World Unites To Solve The Real Problems That Face All Groups Alike.

Feminine Intuition? Is That What You Wanted The Robot For? You Men. Faced With A Woman Reaching A Correct Conclusion And Unable To Accept The Fact That She Is Your Equal Or Superior In Intelligence, You Invent Something Called Feminine Intuition.

Despite All That Education And Experience Can Do, I Retain A Certain Level Of Unsophistication That I Cannot Eradicate And That My Friends Find Amusing. In Fact, I Think I Sometimes Detect Conspiratorial Plottings Among My Friends To Protect Me Against My Own Lack Of Sophistication. I Don't Mind. I Suspect That I Am Never Quite As Unsophisticated As They Think I Am, But I Don't Mind.

Creationists Make It Sound As Though A 'theory' Is Something You Dreamt Up After Being Drunk All Night.

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.

Society Is Much More Easily Soothed Than One's Own Conscience.

There Is No One So Insufferable As A Person Who Gives No Other Excuse For A Peculiar Action Than Saying He Had Been Directed To It In A Dream.

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.

Life Would Be Impossible On Such A Planet. It Wouldn't Get Enough Heat And Light, And If It Rotated There Would Be Total Darkness Half Of Every Day. There Wouldn't Be Any Native Inhabitants. You Couldn't Expect Life - Which Is Fundamentally Dependent On Light - To Develop Under Such Extreme Conditions Of Light Deprivation. Half Of Every Axial Rotation Spent In Darkness! No, Nothing Could Exist Under Conditions Like That.

The Greatest Inventors Are Unknown To Us. Someone Invented The Wheel - But Who?

The True Artist Is Quite Rational As Well As Imaginative And Knows What He Is Doing; If He Does Not, His Art Suffers.

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.

Part Of The Inhumanity Of The Computer Is That, Once It Is Competently Programmed And Working Smoothly, It Is Completely Honest.

I Stand Four-square For Reason, And Object To What Seems To Me To Be Irrationality, Whatever The Source. If You Are On My Side In This, I Must Warn You That The Army Of The Night Has The Advantage Of Overwhelming Numbers, And, By Its Very Nature, Is Immune To Reason, So That It Is Entirely Unlikely That You And I Can Win Out. We Will Always Remain A Tiny And Probably Hopeless Minority, But Let Us Never Tire Of Presenting Our View, And Of Fighting The Good Fight For The Right.

An Atom-blaster Is A Good Weapon, But It Can Point Both Ways.

Thinking Is The Activity I Love Best, And Writing To Me Is Simply Thinking Through My Fingers. I Can Write Up To 18 Hours A Day. Typing 90 Words A Minute, I've Done Better Than 50 Pages A Day. Nothing Interferes With My Concentration. You Could Put An Orgy In My Office And I Wouldn't Look Up-well, Maybe Once.

I Write For The Same Reason I Breathe - Because If I Didn't, I Would Die.

If My Doctor Told Me I Had Only Six Minutes To Live, I Wouldn't Brood. I'd Type A Little Faster.

Korell Is That Frequent Phenomenon In History : The Republic Whose Ruler Has Every Attribute Of The Absolute Monarch But The Name. It Therefore Enjoyed The Usual Despotism Unrestrained Even By Those Two Moderating Influences In The Legitimate Monarchies: Regal "honor" And Court Etiquette.

Finished Products Are For Decadent Minds.

John Dalton's Records, Carefully Preserved For A Century, Were Destroyed During The World War Ii Bombing Of Manchester. It Is Not Only The Living Who Are Killed In War.

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.

The Iranians Are Moslems And The Iraqi Are Moslems. Both Are Certain That There Is No God But Allah And That Mohammed Is His Prophet And Believe It With All Their Hearts. And Yet, At The Moment, Iraq Doesn't Trust Iran Worth A Damn, And Iran Trusts Iraq Even Less Than That. In Fact, Iran Is Convinced That Iraq Is In The Pay Of The Great Satan (that's God-fearing America, In Case You've Forgotten) And Iraq Counters With The Accusation That It Is Iran Who Is In The Pay Of The Great Satan. Neither Side Is Accusing The Godless Soviets Of Anything, Which Is A Puzzle

The World Of A.d. 2014 Will Have Few Routine Jobs That Cannot Be Done Better By Some Machine Than By Any Human Being. Mankind Will Therefore Have Become Largely A Race Of Machine Tenders.

If A Conclusion Is Not Poetically Balanced, It Cannot Be Scientifically True.

University President: Why Is It That You Physicists Always Require So Much Expensive Equipment? Now The Department Of Mathematics Requires Nothing But Money For Paper, Pencils, And Erasers . . . And The Department Of Philosophy Is Better Still. It Doesn't Even Ask For Erasers.

The Appearance Of Strength Is All About You. It Would Seem To Last Forever. However... The Rotten Tree-trunk, Until The Very Moment When The Storm-blast Breaks It In Two, Has All The Appearance Of Might It Ever Had. The Storm-blast Whistles Through The Branches Of The Empire Even Now. Listen... And You Will Hear The Creaking.

The Fundamentalists Deny That Evolution Has Taken Place; They Deny That The Earth And The Universe As A Whole Are More Than A Few Thousand Years Old, And So On. There Is Ample Scientific Evidence That The Fundamentalists Are Wrong In These Matters, And That Their Notions Of Cosmogony Have About As Much Basis In Fact As The Tooth Fairy Has.

... You Just Can't Differentiate Between A Robot And The Very Best Of Humans.

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

Experimentation Is The Least Arrogant Method Of Gaining Knowledge. The Experimenter Humbly Asks A Question Of Nature.

A Subtle Thought That Is In Error May Yet Give Rise To Fruitful Inquiry That Can Establish Truths Of Great Value.

All Humanity Could Share A Common Insanity And Be Immersed In A Common Illusion While Living In A Common Chaos. That Can't Be Disproved, But We Have No Choice But To Follow Our Senses.

Do Not Forget That A Traitor Within Our Ranks, Known To Us, Can Do More Harm To The Enemy Than A Loyal Man Can Do Good To Us.

Democracy Cannot Survive Overpopulation. Human Dignity Cannot Survive It. Convenience And Decency Cannot Survive It. As You Put More And More People Into The World, The Value Of Life Not Only Declines, But It Disappears. It Doesn't Matter If Someone Dies.

I Am All For Cultural Diversity And Would Be Willing To See Each Recognizable Group Value Its Cultural Heritage. I Am A New York Patriot, For Instance, And If I Lived In Los Angeles, I Would Love To Get Together With Other New York Expatriates And Sing "give My Regards To Broadway".

It Seems To Me, Golan, That The Advance Of Civilization Is Nothing But An Exercise In The Limiting Of Privacy.

One Thought That Occurs To Me Is That Men Will Continue To Withdraw From Nature In Order To Create An Environment That Will Suit Them Better.

Human Beings Thought With Their Hands. It Was Their Hands That Were The Answer Of Curiosity, That Felt And Pinched And Turned And Lifted And Hefted. There Were Animals That Had Brains Of Respectable Size, But They Had No Hands And That Made All The Difference.

Naturally, Since [the Sumerians] Didn't Know What Caused The Flood Anymore Than We Do, They Blamed The Gods. (that's The Advantage Of Religion. You're Never Short An Explanation For Anything.)

It Is Well-known That The Friend Of A Conqueror Is But The Last Victim.

People Are Entirely Too Disbelieving Of Coincidence.

Plate Glass... Has No Beauty Of Its Own. Ideally, You Ought Not To Be Able To See It At All, But Through It You Can See All That Is Happening Outside. That Is The Equivalent Of Writing That Is Plain And Unadorned. Ideally, In Reading Such Writing, You Are Not Even Aware That You Are Reading. Ideas And Events Seem Merely To Flow From The Mind Of The Writer Into That Of The Reader Without Any Barrier Between. I Hope That Is What Is Happening When You Read This Book

That's The Harm Of Close Encounters: That It Convinces Tens Of Millions That That's What Just Science Fiction Is.

Self-education Is, I Firmly Believe, The Only Kind Of Education There Is.

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?"

True Literacy Is Becoming An Arcane Art, And The Nation Is Steadily "dumbing Down."

I Don't Believe In Personal Immortality; The Only Way I Expect To Have Some Version Of Such A Thing Is Through My Books.

The Spell Of Power Never Quite Releases Its Hold.

If I Had Felt Then As I Feel Now, Or As I Felt A Few Years After I Had Married Her, Nothing Could Possibly Have Persuaded Me To Marry A Woman Who Smoked. Dates, Yes. Sexual Adventures, Yes. But To Pin Myself Permanently Inside Closed Quarters With A Smoker? Never. Never. Never. Beauty Wouldn't Count, Sweetness Wouldn't Count, Suitability In Every Other Respect Wouldn't Count.

In The Presence Of Total Darkness, The Mind Finds It Absolutely Necessary To Create Light.

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?

It Is The Invariable Lesson To Humanity That Distance In Time, And In Space As Well, Lends Focus. It Is Not Recorded, Incidentally, That The Lesson Has Ever Been Permanently Learned.

The World In General Disapproves Of Creativity, And To Be Creative In Public Is Particularly Bad. Even To Speculate In Public Is Rather Worrisome.

Having Reached 451 Books As Of Now Doesn't Help The Situation. If I Were To Be Dying Now, I Would Be Murmuring, "too Bad! Only Four Hundred Fifty-one." (those Would Be My Next-to-last Words. The Last Ones Will Be: "i Love You, Janet.") [they Were. -janet.]

There Is A Single Light Of Science, And To Brighten It Anywhere Is To Brighten It Everywhere.

Single Relationship

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.

When I Die I Won't Go To Heaven Or Hell; There Will Just Be Nothingness.

I Consider Violence An Uneconomical Way Of Attaining An End. There Are Always Better Substitutes, Though They May Sometimes Be A Little Less Direct.

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?

You Don't Have To Be Able To Lay Eggs To Know When One Of Them Is Rotten.

The Temptation Was Great To Muster What Force We Could And Put Up A Fight. It's The Easiest Way Out, And The Most Satisfactory To Self-respect--but, Nearly Invariably, The Stupidest.

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.

We're Forever Teetering On The Brink Of The Unknowable, And Trying To Understand What Can't Be Understood.

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.

Love Life Seems To Be That Factor Which Requires The Largest Quantity Of Magical Tinkering.

Properly Read, The Bible Is The Most Potent Force For Atheism Ever Conceived.

If There Is A God

So, Then, What Is Style? There Are Two Chief Aspects Of Any Piece Of Writing: 1) What You Say And 2) How You Say It. The Former Is "content" And The Latter Is "style."

Computerization Eliminates The Middleman

Even As A Youngster, Though, I Could Not Bring Myself To Believe That If Knowledge Presented Danger, The Solution Was Ignorance.

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.

It Pays To Be Obvious, Especially If You Have A Reputation For Subtlety.

Until Now In World's History, Whenever We've Had A Dark Age, Its Been Temporary And Local. And Other Parts Of The World Have Been Doing Fine. And Eventually, They Help You Get Out Of The Dark Age. We Are Now Facing A Possible Dark Age Which Is Going To Be World-wide And Permanent! That's Not Fun. That's A Different Thing. But Once We Have Established Many Worlds, We Can Do Whatever We Want As Long As We Do It One World At A Time.

To Bring About Destruction By Overcrowding, Mass Starvation, Anarchy, The Destruction Of Our Most Cherished Values, There Is No Need To Do Anything. We Need Only Do Nothing Except What Comes Naturally, And Breed. And How Easy It Is To Do Nothing

Violence Is The Last Refuge Of The Incompetent.

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.

I Can't Bear To Hear A Human Being Spoken Of With Contempt Just Because Of His Group Identification...it's These Respectable People Here Who Create Those Hooligans Out There.

I Am An Atheist, Out And Out. It Took Me A Long Time To Say It. I've Been An Atheist For Years And Years, But Somehow I Felt It Was Intellectually Unrespectable To Say That One Is An Atheist, Because It Assumed Knowledge That One Didn't Have. Somehow It Was Better To Say One Was A Humanist Or Agnostic. I Don't Have The Evidence To Prove That God Doesn't Exist, But I So Strongly Suspect That He Doesn't That I Don't Want To Waste My Time.

Every Human Being Lived Behind An Impenetrable Wall Of Choking Mist Within Which No Other But He Existed. Occasionally There Were The Dim Signals From Deep Within The Cavern In Which Another Man Was Located So That Each Might Grope Toward The Other. Yet Because They Did Not Know One Another, And Could Not Understand One Another, And Dared Not Trust One Another, And Felt From Infancy The Terrors And Insecurity Of That Ultimate Isolation There Was The Hunted Fear Of Man For Man, The Savage Rapacity Of Man Toward Man.

It Is The Nature Of The Mind That Makes Individuals Kin, And The Differences In The Shape, Form Or Manner Of The Material Atoms Out Of Whose Intricate Relationships That Mind Is Built Are Altogether Trivial.

I Would Argue That A Truly Developed Country Would Be Beyond Presidents And Kings. In A World With Some Semblance Of Equality, Each Liberal-minded Woman, Each Gay Person, And Indeed Almost Every Person Could Be Their Own President. In A World Of Equals, What Real Service Does A Ruler Provide?

Author's Notes: This Story Starts With Section 6. This Is Not A Mistake. I Have My Own Subtle Reasoning. So, Just Read, And Enjoy.

However Much The Creationist Leaders Might Hammer Away At Their Scientific And Philosophical Points, They Would Be Helpless And A Laughing-stock If That Were All They Had. It Is Religion That Recruits Their Squadrons. Tens Of Millions Of Americans, Who Neither Know Nor Understand The Actual Arguments For - Of Even Against - Evolution, March In The Army Of The Night, Their Bibles Held High. And They Are A Strong And Frightening Force, Impervious To, And Immunized Against, The Feeble Lance Of Mere Reason.

I Made Up My Mind Long Ago To Follow One Cardinal Rule In All My Writing-to Be Clear. I Have Given Up All Thought Of Writing Poetically Or Symbolically Or Experimentally, Or In Any Of The Other Modes That Might (if I Were Good Enough) Get Me A Pulitzer Prize. I Would Write Merely Clearly And In This Way Establish A Warm Relationship Between Myself And My Readers, And The Professional Critics-well, They Can Do Whatever They Wish.

What I Will Be Remembered For Are The Foundation Trilogy And The Three Laws Of Robotics. What I Want To Be Remembered For Is No One Book, Or No Dozen Books. Any Single Thing I Have Written Can Be Paralleled Or Even Surpassed By Something Someone Else Has Done. However, My Total Corpus For Quantity, Quality And Variety Can Be Duplicated By No One Else. That Is What I Want To Be Remembered For.

In My Life There Have Been Several Individuals Whose Presence Made It Easier For Me To Think, Pleasanter To Make My Responses.

All Life Is Nucleic Acid; The Rest Is Commentary.

Every Period Of Human Development Has Had Its Own Particular Type Of Human Conflict---its Own Variety Of Problem That, Apparently, Could Be Settled Only By Force. And Each Time, Frustratingly Enough, Force Never Really Settled The Problem. Instead, It Persisted Through A Series Of Conflicts, Then Vanished Of Itself---what's The Expression---ah, Yes, 'not With A Bang, But A Whimper,' As The Economic And Social Environment Changed. And Then, New Problems, And A New Series Of Wars.

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 Every Man Must Take On A Science Fictional Way Of Thinking.

The Three Laws Of Robotics: 1: A Robot May Not Injure A Human Being Or, Through Inaction, Allow A Human Being To Come To Harm; 2: A Robot Must Obey The Orders Given It By Human Beings Except Where Such Orders Would Conflict With The First Law; 3: A Robot Must Protect Its Own Existence As Long As Such Protection Does Not Conflict With The First Or Second Law; The Zeroth Law: A Robot May Not Harm Humanity, Or, By Inaction, Allow Humanity To Come To Harm.

To Me It Seems To Be Important To Believe People To Be Good Even If They Tend To Be Bad, Because Your Own Joy And Happiness In Life Is Increased That Way, And The Pleasures Of The Belief Outweigh The Occasional Disappointments. To Be A Cynic About People Works Just The Other Way Around And Makes You Incapable About Enjoying The Good Things.

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. It Is Better To Know - Even If The Knowledge Endures Only For The Moment That Comes Before Destruction - Than To Gain Eternal Life At The Price Of A Dull And Swinish Lack Of Comprehension Of A Universe That Swirls Unseen Before Us In All Its Wonder. That Was The Choice Of Achilles, And It Is Mine, Too.

I, On The Other Hand, Am A Finished Product. I Absorb Electrical Energy Directly And Utilize It With An Almost One Hundred Percent Efficiency. I Am Composed Of Strong Metal, Am Continuously Conscious, And Can Stand Extremes Of Environment Easily. These Are Facts Which, With The Self-evident Proposition That No Being Can Create Another Being Superior To Itself, Smashes Your Silly Hypothesis To Nothing.

He Had Read Much, If One Considers His Long Life; But His Contemplation Was Much More Than His Reading. He Was Wont To Say That If He Had Read As Much As Other Men He Should Have Known No More Than Other Men.

You Can't Assert An Answer Just Because It's Not Something Else.

You Must Keep Sending Work Out; You Must Never Let A Manuscript Do Nothing But Eat Its Head Off In A Drawer. You Send That Work Out Again And Again, While You're Working On Another One. If You Have Talent, You Will Receive Some Measure Of Success - But Only If You Persist.

This Game The Persian Magi Did Invent, The Force Of Eastern Wisdom To Express: From Thence To Busy Europeans Sent, And Styled By Modern Lombards Pensive Chess.

Surely No Child, And Few Adults, Have Ever Watched A Bird In Flight Without Envy.

The Facts, Gentlemen, And Nothing But The Facts, For Careful Eyes Are Narrowly Watching.

Speech, Originally, Was The Device Whereby Man Learned, Imperfectly, To Transmit The Thoughts And Emotions Of His Mind. By Setting Up Arbitrary Sounds And Combinations Of Sounds To Represent Certain Mental Nuances, He Developed A Method Of Communication--but One Which In Its Clumsiness And Thick-thumbed Inadequacy Degenerated All The Delicacy Of The Mind Into Gross And Guttural Signaling.

It Took Me Thirty-six Years; And, In Some Fifty Stories, Ranging In Length From Short-shorts To Novels, I Think I Must Have Touched, In One Way Or Another, On Every Aspect Of Computers And Computerization. And (mark This!) I Did It Without Ever Knowing Anything At All About Computers In Any Real Sense. To This Day, I Don't. I Am Totally Inept With Machinery... On My Typewriter I Turn Out Books At The Contemptible Rate Of One A Month

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.

A Robot May Not Injure A Human Being, Or, Through Inaction, Allow A Human Being To Come To Harm.

There Is No Master But The Master,” He Said, “and Qt-1 Is His Prophet.

Boasts Are Wind And Deeds Are Hard.

A Robot Must Protect Its Own Existence As Long As Such Protection Does Not Conflict With The First Or Second Laws.

To Introduce Something Altogether New Would Mean To Begin All Over, To Become Ignorant Again, And To Run The Old, Old Risk Of Failing To Learn.

The Downtrodden Are More Religious Than The Satisfied.

And It Came To Pass That Ac Learned How To Reverse The Direction Of Entropy. But There Was Now No Man To Whom Ac Might Give The Answer Of The Last Question. No Matter. The Answer - By Demonstration - Would Take Care Of That, Too. For Another Timeless Interval, Ac Thought How Best To Do This. Carefully, Ac Organized The Program. The Consciousness Of Ac Encompassed All Of What Had Been A Universe And Brooded Over What Was Now Chaos. Step By Step, It Must Be Done. And Ac Said, "let There Be Light!" And There Was Light...

Science Can Be Introduced To Children Well Or Poorly. If Poorly, Children Can Be Turned Away From Science; They Can Develop A Lifelong Antipathy; They Will Be In A Far Worse Condition Than If They Had Never Been Introduced To Science At All.

Intelligence Is A Valuable Thing, But It Is Not Usually The Key To Survival. Sheer Fecundity ... Usually Counts. The Intelligent Gorilla Doesn't Do As Well As The Less Intelligent But More-fecund Rat, Which Doesn't Do As Well As The Still-less-intelligent But Still-more-fecund Cockroach, Which Doesn't Do As Well As The Minimally-intelligent But Maximally-fecund Bacterium.

It’s A Poor Atom Blaster That Won’t Point Both Ways.

I'm Not A Speed Reader. I'm A Speed Understander.

I Expect Death To Be Nothingness And, For Removing Me From All Possible Fears Of Death, I Am Thankful To Atheism.

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.

How Many People Is The Earth Able To Sustain?

Dreams May Be Impossible, Yet Still Be Dreamed.

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.

One Of Walt Whitman's Best-known Poems Is This One: When I Heard The Learn'd Astronomer,.... The Trouble Is, Whitman Is Talking Through His Hat, But The Poor Soul Didn't Know Any Better

Robots Will Neither Be Common Nor Very Good In 2014, But They Will Be In Existence.

If All Human Beings Understood History, They Might Cease Making The Same Stupid Mistakes Over And Over.

With Both People And Computers On The Job, Computer Error Can Be More Quickly Tracked Down And Corrected By People And, Conversely, Human Error Can Be More Quickly Corrected By Computers. What It Amounts To Is That Nothing Serious Can Happen Unless Human Error And Computer Error Take Place Simultaneously. And That Hardly Ever Happens.

Gratitude Is Best And Most Effective When It Does Not Evaporate Itself In Empty Phrases.

All The Hundreds Of Millions Of People Who, In Their Time, Believed The Earth Was Flat Never Succeeded In Unrounding It By An Inch.

My Feeling Is, Quite Simply, That If There Is A God, He Has Done Such A Bad Job That He Isn't Worth Discussing.

If There Is A God

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 Life, People Will Take You At Your Own Reckoning.

Not Good Enough

Today's Science Fiction Is Tomorrow's Science Fact.

The Most Exciting Phrase To Hear In Science, The One That Heralds New Discoveries, Is Not 'eureka!' But 'that's Funny...'

If Knowledge Can Create Problems, It Is Not Through Ignorance That We Can Solve Them.

But Life Is Glorious When It Is Happy; Days Are Carefree When They Are Happy; The Interplay Of Thought And Imagination Is Far And Superior To That Of Muscle And Sinew. Let Me Tell You, If You Don't Know It From Your Own Experience, That Reading A Good Book, Losing Yourself In The Interest Of Words And Thoughts, Is For Some People (me, For Instance) An Incredible Intensity Of Happiness.

When I Sit Down At The Typewriter, I Write. Someone Once Asked Me If I Had A Fixed Routine Before I Start, Like Setting Up Exercises, Sharpening Pencils, Or Having A Drink Of Orange Juice. I Said, "no, The Only Thing I Do Before I Start Writing Is To Make Sure That I'm Close Enough To The Typewriter To Reach The Keys."

Life Originated In The Sea, And About Eighty Percent Of It Is Still There.

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.

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.

The Law Of Conservation Of Energy Tells Us We Can't Get Something For Nothing, But We Refuse To Believe It.

All Roads Lead To Trantor, Says The Old Proverb, And That Is Where All Stars End.

There Was This Superstitious Fear On The Part Of The Pygmies Of The Present For The Relics Of The Giants Of The Past.

Night Will Always Be A Time Of Fear And Insecurity, And The Heart Will Sink With The Sun.

To Any Who Know The Star Field Well From One Certain Reference Point, Stars Are As Individual As People. Jump Ten Parsecs, However, And Not Even Your Own Sun Is Recognizable.

The Tyranni Rule Fifty Worlds; They Are Outnumbered Hundreds To One. In Such A Position, Simple Force Is Insufficient. Devious Methods, Intrigue, Assassination Are Their Specialties. The Net They Weave Across Space Is A Wide One, And Close-meshed. I Can Well Believe That It Extends Across Five Hundred Light-years To Earth.

Flattery Is Useful When Dealing With Youngsters.

When I Read About The Way In Which Library Funds Are Being Cut And Cut, I Can Only Think That American Society Has Found One More Way To Destroy Itself.

The Intelligent Man Is Never Bored.

Life Is A Journey, But Don't Worry, You'll Find A Parking Spot At The End.

In A Properly Automated And Educated World, Then, Machines May Prove To Be The True Humanizing Influence. It May Be That Machines Will Do The Work That Makes Life Possible And That Human Beings Will Do All The Other Things That Make Life Pleasant And Worthwhile

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.

Imagine The People Who Believe Such Things And Who Are Not Ashamed To Ignore, Totally, All The Patient Findings Of Thinking Minds Through All The Centuries Since The Bible Was Written. And It Is These Ignorant People, The Most Uneducated, The Most Unimaginative, The Most Unthinking Among Us, Who Would Make Themselves The Guides And Leaders Of Us All; Who Would Force Their Feeble And Childish Beliefs On Us; Who Would Invade Our Schools And Libraries And Homes. I Personally Resent It Bitterly.

Scientific Apparatus Offers A Window To Knowledge, But As They Grow More Elaborate, Scientists Spend Ever More Time Washing The Windows.

Tell Me Why The Stars Do Shine, Tell Me Why The Ivy Twines, Tell Me What Makes Skies So Blue, And I'll Tell You Why I Love You. Nuclear Fusion Makes Stars To Shine, Tropisms Make The Ivy Twine, Raleigh Scattering Make Skies So Blue, Testicular Hormones Are Why I Love You.

What Would I Do If I Knew I Only Had Six Months To Live? Type Faster.

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B. H. Liddell Hart

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