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I Have Never, In All My Life, Not For One Moment, Been Tempted Toward Religion Of Any Kind. The Fact Is That I Feel No Spiritual Void. I Have My Philosophy Of Life, Which Does Not Include Any Aspect Of The Supernatural And Which I Find Totally Satisfying. I Am, In Short, A Rationalist And Believe Only That Which Reason Tells Me Is So.

-Isaac Asimov

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I Have Never, In

Isaac Asimov

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I Have Never, In All My Life, Not For One Moment, Been Tempted Toward Religion Of Any Kind. The Fact Is That I Feel No Spiritual Void. I Have My Philosophy Of Life, Which Does Not Include Any Aspect Of The Supernatural And Which I Find Totally Satisfying. I Am, In Short, A Rationalist And Believe Only That Which Reason Tells Me Is So.

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The Significant Chemicals Of Living Tissue Are Rickety And Unstable, Which Is Exactly What Is Needed For Life.

Where Any Answer Is Possible, All Answers Are Meaningless.

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.

The Peace And Joy Of The Christmas Season Was Marred By A Proclamation Of A General Strike Of All The Military Forces Of The World. Panic Reigns In The Hearts Of All The Patriots Of Every Persuasion. Meanwhile, Fears Of Universal Disaster Sank To An All-time Low Over The World.

It Has Been My Philosophy Of Life That Difficulties Vanish When Faced Boldly.

How Then To Enforce Peace? Not By Reason, Certainly, Nor By Education. If A Man Could Not Look At The Fact Of Peace And The Fact Of War And Choose The Former In Preference To The Latter, What Additional Argument Could Persuade Him? What Could Be More Eloquent As A Condemnation Of War Than War Itself? What Tremendous Feat Of Dialectic Could Carry With It A Tenth The Power Of A Single Gutted Ship With Its Ghastly Cargo?

Man's Greatest Asset Is The Unsettled Mind.

If You Were To Insist I Was A Robot, You Might Not Consider Me Capable Of Love In Some Mystic Human Sense, But You Would Not Be Able To Distinguish My Reactions From That Which You Would Call Love So What Difference Would It Make?

Only A Lie That Wasn't Ashamed Of Itself Could Possibly Succeed.

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.

It's Not So Much What You Have To Learn If You Accept Weird Theories, It's What You Have To Unlearn.

When, However, The Lay Public Rallies Round An Idea That Is Denounced By Distinguished But Elderly Scientists And Supports That Idea With Great Fervor And Emotion - The Distinguished But Elderly Scientists Are Then, After All, Probably Right.

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.

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

Dreams May Be Impossible, Yet Still Be Dreamed.

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.

Isn't It Sad That You Can Tell People That The Ozone Layer Is Being Depleted, The Forests Are Being Cut Down, The Deserts Are Advancing Steadily, That The Greenhouse Effect Will Raise The Sea Level 200 Feet, That Overpopulation Is Choking Us, That Pollution Is Killing Us, That Nuclear War May Destroy Us - And They Yawn And Settle Back For A Comfortable Nap. But Tell Them That The Martians Are Landing, And They Scream And Run.

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

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.

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

Any Fool Can Tell A Crisis When It Arrives. The Real Service To The State Is To Detect It In Embryo.

I Have Never Written A Book That Didn't Teach Me Far More Than It Taught My Reader.

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.

Science Fiction Writers Foresee The Inevitable, And Although Problems And Catastrophes May Be Inevitable, Solutions Are Not.

The Soft Bonds Of Love Are Indifferent To Life And Death. They Hold Through Time So That Yesterday’s Love Is Part Of Today’s And The Confidence In Tomorrow’s Love Is Also Part Of Today’s. And When One Dies, The Memory Lives In The Other, And Is Warm And Breathing. And When Both Die - I Almost Believe, Rationalist Though I Am - That Somewhere It Remains, Indestructible And Eternal, Enriching All Of The Universe By The Mere Fact That Once It Existed.

Nothing Interferes With My Concentration. You Could Put On An Orgy In My Office And I Wouldn't Look Up. Well, Maybe Once.

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

People Think Of Education As Something That They Can Finish.

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 Want To Be A Human Being, Nothing More And Nothing Less. ... I Don't Suppose We Can Ever Stop Hating Each Other, But Why Encourage That By Keeping The Old Labels With Their Ready-made History Of Millennial Hate?

You Show Me Someone Who Can't Understand People And I'll Show You Someone Who Has Built Up A False Image Of Himself.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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There Is No Merit To Discipline Under Ideal Circumstances. I Must Have It In The Face Of Death Or It Is Worthless.

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

The Intelligent Man Is Never Bored.

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.

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

Working Ten Hour Days Allows You To Fall Behind Twice As Fast As You Could Working Five Hour Days.

To Surrender To Ignorance And Call It God Has Always Been Premature, And It Remains Premature Today.

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

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?

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.

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Fiction Stories

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What Would You Consider A Good Job?" Answered As Follows: "a Good Job Is One In Which I Don't Have To Work, And Get Paid A Lot Of Money." When I Heard That I Cheered And Yelled And Felt That He Should Be Given An A+, For He Had Perfectly Articulated The American Dream Of Those Who Despise Knowledge. What A Politician That Kid Would Have Made.

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

Once You Get It Into Your Head That Somebody Is Controlling Events, You Can Interpret Everything In That Light And Find No Reasonable Certainty Anywhere.

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.

After Years Of Finding Mathematics Easy, I Finally Reached Integral Calculus And Came Up Against A Barrier. I Realized That This Was As Far As I Could Go, And To This Day I Have Never Successfully Gone Beyond It In Any But The Most Superficial Way.

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

The Three Theorems Of Psychohistorical Quantitivity: The Population Under Scrutiny Is Oblivious To The Existence Of The Science Of Psychohistory. The Time Periods Dealt With Are In The Region Of 3 Generations. The Population Must Be In The Billions (±75 Billions) For A Statistical Probability To Have A Psychohistorical Validity.

A Scientist Is As Weak And Human As Any Man, But The Pursuit Of Science May Ennoble Him Even Against His Will.

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

If There Is A God

There Is An Art To Science, And A Science In Art; The Two Are Not Enemies, But Different Aspects Of The Whole.

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.

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

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There Is A Cult Of Ignorance In The United States, And There Has Always Been. The Strain Of Anti-intellectualism Has Been A Constant Thread Winding Its Way Through Our Political And Cultural Life, Nurtured By The False Notion That Democracy Means That "my Ignorance Is Just As Good As Your Knowledge."

Democracies Have

Pierre Curie, A Brilliant Scientist, Happened To Marry A Still More Brilliant One-marie, The Famous Madame Curie-and Is The Only Great Scientist In History Who Is Consistently Identified As The Husband Of Someone Else.

The Energy Requirements For Interstellar Travel Are So Great That It Is Inconceivable To Me That Any Creatures Piloting Their Ships Across The Vast Depths Of Space Would Do So Only In Order To Play Games With Us Over A Period Of Decades. If They Want To Make Contact, They Would Make Contact; If Not, They Would Save Their Energy And Go Elsewhere.

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

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

I Even Got A Letter From A Young Woman In British Columbia That Began As Follows: 'today I Am Eighteen. I Am Sitting At The Window, Looking Out At The Rain, And Thinking How Much I Love You.'

Flattery Is Useful When Dealing With Youngsters.

The Greatest Weapons In The Conquest Of Knowledge Are An Understanding Mind And The Inexorable Curiosity That Drives It On.

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

People Are Entirely Too Disbelieving Of Coincidence.

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.

There Are No Happy Endings In History, Only Crisis Points That Pass.

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.

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

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

How Often People Speak Of Art And Science As Though They Were Two Entirely Different Things, With No Interconnection. That Is All Wrong. The True Artist Is Quite Rational As Well As Imaginative And Knows What He Is Doing; If He Does Not, His Art Suffers. The True Scientist Is Quite Imaginative As Well As Rational, And Sometimes Leaps To Solutions Where Reason Can Follow Only Slowly; If He Does Not, His Science Suffers.

Now Remember, Kids, The Internet Is Serious Business.

Serious Business

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.

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

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.

If I Were Not An Atheist, I Would Believe In A God Who Would Choose To Save People On The Basis Of The Totality Of Their Lives And Not The Pattern Of Their Words. I Think He Would Prefer An Honest And Righteous Atheist To A Tv Preacher Whose Every Word Is God, God, God And Whose Every Deed Is Foul, Foul, Foul.

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.

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?"

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

All Evil Is Good Become Cancerous.

To Succeed, Planning Alone Is Insufficient. One Must Improvise As Well.

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.

You Don't Need To Predict The Future. Just Choose A Future -- A Good Future, A Useful Future -- And Make The Kind Of Prediction That Will Alter Human Emotions And Reactions In Such A Way That The Future You Predicted Will Be Brought About. Better To Make A Good Future Than Predict A Bad One.

What Do You Call That Nice, Shiny White Metal They Use To Make Sidings And Airplanes Out Of? Aluminum, Right? Aluminum, Pronounced 'uh-loo-mih-num', Right? Anybody Knows That! But Do You Know How The British Spell It? 'aluminium', Pronounced 'al-yoo-mih-nee-um'. Ever Hear Anything So Ridiculous? The French And Germans Spell It 'aluminium', Too, But They're Foreigners Who Don't Speak Earth-standard. You'd Think The British, However, Using Our Language, Would Be More Careful

I Don't Think I've Ever Held A Racket In My Hand ... There's Got To Be Somebody In The Us Who Isn't Trying To Play Tennis And Stinking Up The Court.

Humanity Is Cutting Down Its Forests, Apparently Oblivious To The Fact That We May Not Be Able To Live Without Them.

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

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.

Since Emotions Are Few And Reasons Are Many (said The Robot Giscard) The Behavior Of A Crowd Can Be More Easily Predicted Than The Behavior Of One Person.

During The Century After Newton, It Was Still Possible For A Man Of Unusual Attainments To Master All Fields Of Scientific Knowledge. But By 1800, This Had Become Entirely Impracticable.

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.

The History Of Science Is Full Of Revolutionary Advances That Required Small Insights That Anyone Might Have Had, But That, In Fact, Only One Person Did.

Boasts Are Wind And Deeds Are Hard.

It Is Always Useful, You See, To Subject The Past Life Of Reform Politicians To Rather Inquisitive Research.

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.

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.]

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.

Great Depression

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.

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.

Modern Science Fiction Is The Only Form Of Literature That Consistently Considers The Nature Of The Changes That Face Us.

It Is No Defense Of Superstition And Pseudoscience To Say That It Brings Solace And Comfort To People. . . . If Solace And Comfort Are How We Judge The Worth Of Something, Then Consider That Tobacco Brings Solace And Comfort To Smokers; Alcohol Brings It To Drinkers; Drugs Of All Kinds Bring It To Addicts; The Fall Of Cards And The Run Of Horses Bring It To Gamblers; Cruelty And Violence Bring It To Sociopaths. Judge By Solace And Comfort Only And There Is No Behavior We Ought To Interfere With.

Theories Are Not So Much Wrong As Incomplete

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

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.

It Is Change Continuing Change, Inevitable Change That Is The Dominant Factor In Society Today.

The Final End Of Eternity, And The Beginning Of Infinity

One Might Suppose That Reality Must Be Held To At All Costs. However, Though That May Be The Moral Thing To Do, It Is Not Necessarily The Most Useful Thing To Do. The Greeks Themselves Chose The Ideal Over The Real In Their Geometry And Demonstrated Very Well That Far More Could Be Achieved By Consideration Of Abstract Line And Form Than By A Study Of The Real Lines And Forms Of The World; The Greater Understanding Achieved Through Abstraction Could Be Applied Most Usefully To The Very Reality That Was Ignored In The Process Of Gaining Knowledge.

Finished Products Are For Decadent Minds.

There Is No Belief, However Foolish, That Will Not Gather Its Faithful Adherents Who Will Defend It To The Death.

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.

God, How That Stings! I've Spent A Lifetime Loving Science Fiction And Now I Find That You Must Expect Nothing Of Something That's Just Science Fiction.

Increasingly, Our Leaders Must Deal With Dangers That Threaten The Entire World, Where An Understanding Of Those Dangers And The Possible Solutions Depends On A Good Grasp Of Science. The Ozone Layer, The Greenhouse Effect, Acid Rain, Questions Of Diet And Heredity. All Require Scientific Literacy. Can Americans Choose The Proper Leaders And Support The Proper Programs If They Themselves Are Scientifically Illiterate? The Whole Premise Of Democracy Is That It Is Safe To Leave Important Questions To The Court Of Public Opinion - But Is It Safe To Leave Them To The Court Of Public Ignorance?

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

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

The Great Secret Of The Successful Fool Is That He's No Fool At All

From My Close Observation Of Writers... They Fall Into Two Groups: 1) Those Who Bleed Copiously And Visibly At Any Bad Review, And 2) Those Who Bleed Copiously And Secretly At Any Bad Review.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Of Course There Are Worlds. Millions Of Them! Every Star You See Has Worlds, And Most Of Those You Don't See.

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 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?

I Have Written 240 Books On A Wide Variety Of Topics. . . . Some Of It I Based On Education I Received In My School, But Most Of It Was Backed By Other Ways Of Learning - Chiefly In The Books I Obtained In The Public Library.

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

It Is The Chief Characteristic Of The Religion Of Science That It Works.

Characteristics

[social] Science Fiction Is That Branch Of Literature Which Is Concerned With The Impact Of Scientific Advance On Human Beings.

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

You See, Proteins, As I Probably Needn't Tell You, Are Immensely Complicated Groupings Of Amino Acids And Certain Other Specialized Compounds, Arranged In Intricate Three-dimensional Patterns That Are As Unstable As Sunbeams On A Cloudy Day. It Is This Instability That Is Life, Since It Is Forever Changing Its Position In An Effort To Maintain Its Identity--in The Manner Of A Long Rod Balanced On An Acrobat's Nose.

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.

If I Am Right, Then (religious Fundamentalists) Will Not Go To Heaven, Because There Is No Heaven. If They Are Right, Then They Will Not Go To Heaven, Because They Are Hypocrites.

He Always Pictured Himself A Libertarian, Which To My Way Of Thinking Means "i Want The Liberty To Grow Rich And You Can Have The Liberty To Starve". It's Easy To Believe That No One Should Depend On Society For Help When You Yourself Happen Not To Need Such Help.

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

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.

Things Do Change. The Only Question Is That Since Things Are Deteriorating So Quickly, Will Society And Man's Habits Change Quickly Enough?

Having No Unusual Coincidence Is Far More Unusual Than Any Coincidence Could Possibly Be.

Coincidence In Life

Oh, For A Pin That Would Puncture Pretension!

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.

The Easiest Way To Solve A Problem Is To Deny It Exists.

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.” -r. Daneel Olivaw

Computerization Eliminates The Middleman

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.

One Might Accept Death Reasoningly, With Every Aspect Of The Conscious Mind, But The Body Was A Brute Beast That Knew Nothing Of Reason.

I Have Been Told That A Young Would-be Composer Wrote To Mozart Asking Advice About How To Compose A Symphony. Mozart Responded That A Symphony Was A Complex And Demanding Form And It Would Be Better To Start With Something Simpler. The Young Man Protested, 'but, Herr Mozart, You Wrote Symphonies When You Were Younger Than I Am Now.' Mozart Replied, 'i Never Asked How.

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.

It Is Not So Much That I Have Confidence In Scientists Being Right, But That I Have So Much In Nonscientists Being Wrong.

Have Confidence

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.

Many Adults, Whether Consciously Or Unconsciously, Find It Beneath Their Adult Dignity To Do Anything As Childish As Read A Book, Think A Thought, Or Get An Idea. Adults Are Rarely Embarrased At Having Forgotten What Little Algebra Or Geography They Once Learned

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

Look At Yourself

The Downtrodden Are More Religious Than The Satisfied.

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.

[a]ll Knowledge Is One. When A Light Brightens And Illuminates A Corner Of A Room, It Adds To The General Illumination Of The Entire Room. Over And Over Again, Scientific Discoveries Have Provided Answers To Problems That Had No Apparent Connection With The Phenomena That Gave Rise To The Discovery.

This Idea [standardized Time Zones] Was First Advanced And Fought For By Sandford Fleming Of Canada And Charles F. Dowd Of The United States. I Mention Them Chiefly Because Like So Many Benefactors Of Mankind They Have Been Rewarded By Total Obscurity.

The Age Of The Pulp Magazine Was The Last In Which Youngsters, To Get Their Primitive Material, Were Forced To Be Literate.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Believe In Yourself

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.

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.

In Life, People Will Take You At Your Own Reckoning.

Not Good Enough

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.

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.

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.

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

We Mythologists Know Very Well That Myths And Legends Contain Borrowings, Moral Lessons, Nature Cycles, And A Hundred Other Distorting Influences, And We Labor To Cut Them Away And Get To What Might Be A Kernel Of Truth. In Fact, These Same Techniques Must Be Applied To The Most Sober Histories, For No One Writes The Clear And Apparent Truth-if Such A Thing Can Even Be Said To Exist.

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.

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?

Life Is Pleasant. Death Is Peaceful. It's The Transition That's Troublesome.

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