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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.

-Isaac Asimov

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I Made Up My

Isaac Asimov

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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.

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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."

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

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.

There Is No Right To Deny Freedom To Any Object With A Mind Advanced Enough To Grasp The Concept And Desire The State. -(from "the Bicentennial Man) Story)

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

I Am Not Responsible For What Other People Think. I Am Responsible Only For What I Myself Think, And I Know What That Is. No Idea I've Ever Come Up With Has Ever Struck Me As A Divine Revelation. Nothing I Have Ever Observed Leads Me To Think There Is A God Watching Over Me.

Goodbye, Hari, My Love. Remember Always--all You Did For Me.” -i Did Nothing For You.” -you Loved Me And Your Love Made Me--human.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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?

Knowledge Is Indivisible. When People Grow Wise In One Direction, They Are Sure To Make It Easier For Themselves To Grow Wise In Other Directions As Well. On The Other Hand, When They Split Up Knowledge, Concentrate On Their Own Field, And Scorn And Ignore Other Fields, They Grow Less Wise - Even In Their Own Field.

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.

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?

A Fire-eater Must Eat Fire Even If He Has To Kindle It Himself.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Jokes Of The Proper Kind, Properly Told, Can Do More To Enlighten Questions Of Politics, Philosophy, And Literature Than Any Number Of Dull Arguments.

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

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

There Is Not A Discovery In Science, However Revolutionary, However Sparkling With Insight, That Does Not Arise Out Of What Went Before.

Congratulations On The New Library, Because It Isn't Just A Library. It Is A Space Ship That Will Take You To The Farthest Reaches Of The Universe, A Time Machine That Will Take You To The Far Past And The Far Future, A Teacher That Knows More Than Any Human Being, A Friend That Will Amuse You And Console You-and Most Of All, A Gateway, To A Better And Happier And More Useful Life.

Congratulations

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

A Robot Must Obey The Orders Given It By Human Beings Except Where Such Orders Would Conflict With The First Law. [the Second Law Of Robotics]

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.

I Am An Atheist, Out And Out. It Took Me A Long Time To Say It.

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

Why This Reluctance To Make The Change? We Fear The Process Of Reeducation.

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.

Education Isn't Something You Can Finish

The Further A Device Is Removed From Human Control, The More Authentically Mechanical It Seems, And The Whole Trend In Technology Has Been To Devise Machines That Are Less And Less Under Direct Human Control And More And More Under Their Own Apparent Will.

People Are Entirely Too Disbelieving Of Coincidence. They Are Far Too Ready To Dismiss It And To Build Arcane Structures Of Extremely Rickety Substance In Order To Avoid It. I, On The Other Hand, See Coincidence Everywhere As An Inevitable Consequence Of The Laws Of Probability, According To Which Having No Unusual Coincidence Is Far More Unusual Than Any Coincidence Could Possibly Be.

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.

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.

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.

It Is Almost Impossible To Think Of Something No One Has Thought Of Before, But It Is Always Possible To Add Different Frills.

Inspect Every Piece Of Pseudoscience And You Will Find A Security Blanket.

Science Is Uncertain. Theories Are Subject To Revision; Observations Are Open To A Variety Of Interpretations, And Scientists Quarrel Amongst Themselves. This Is Disillusioning For Those Untrained In The Scientific Method, Who Thus Turn To The Rigid Certainty Of The Bible Instead. There Is Something Comfortable About A View That Allows For No Deviation And That Spares You The Painful Necessity Of Having To Think.

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

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

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.

Inertia! Our Ruling Class Knows One Law; No Change. Despotism! They Know One Rule; Force. Maldistribution! They Know One Desire; To Hold What Is Theirs.

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

Characteristics

Meanwhile, Fears Of Universal Disaster Sank To An All Time Low Over The World.

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?

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

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

It's The Writing That Teaches You.

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...

The Whole Business Is The Crudest Sort Of Stratagem, Since We Have No Way Of Foreseeing It To The End. It Is A Mere Paying Out Of Rope On The Chance That Somewhere Along The Length Of It Will Be A Noose.

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."

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

Look At Yourself

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

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.

Scientific Truth Is Beyond Loyalty And Disloyalty.

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

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.

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

I Don't Expect To Live Forever, Nor Do I Repine Over That, But I Am Weak Enough To Want To Be Remembered Forever. - Yet How Few Of Those Who Have Lived, Even Of Those Who Have Accomplished Far More Than I Have, Linger On In World Memory For Even A Single Century After Death

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Never Judge Your Own Writing. You're Not Fit To Do So.

All Normal Life, Peter, Consciously Or Otherwise, Resent Domination. If The Domination Is By An Inferior, Or By A Supposed Inferior, The Resentment Becomes Stronger.

Self-education Is, I Firmly Believe, The Only Kind Of Education There Is. The Only Function Of A School Is To Make Self-education Easier; Failing That, It Does Nothing.

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.

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.

It Is Quite Clear That As Long As The Nations Of The World Spend Most Of Their Energy, Money, And Emotional Strength In Quarreling With Words And Weapons, A True Offensive Against The Common Problems That Threaten Human Survival Is Not Very Likely. A World Government That Can Channel Human Efforts In The Direction Of The Great Solutions Seems Desirable, Even Essential. Naturally, Such A World Government Should Be A Federal One, With Regional And Local Autonomy Safeguarded And With Cultural Diversity Promoted.

World Government

Theories Are Not So Much Wrong As Incomplete

I Don't Subscribe To The Thesis, 'let The Buyer Beware,' I Prefer The Disregarded One That Goes, 'let The Seller Be Honest.'

We Are All Victimized By The Natural Perversity Of Inanimate Objects...and The Assorted Human Beings Who Perpetuate And Maintain This Perversity.

Inanimate Objects

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

When I Feel Difficulty Coming On, I Switch To Another Book I'm Writing. When I Get Back To The Problem, My Unconscious Has Solved It.

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

I Believe In Evidence. I Believe In Observation, Measurement, And Reasoning, Confirmed By Independent Observers. I'll Believe Anything, No Matter How Wild And Ridiculous, If There Is Evidence For It. The Wilder And More Ridiculous Something Is, However, The Firmer And More Solid The Evidence Will Have To Be.

The Whole World Might Know You And Acclaim You, But Someone In The Past, Forever Unreachable, Forever Unknowing, Spoils It All.

The First Step In Making Rabbit Stew Is Catching The Rabbit.

I Don’t Like Anything That’s Got To Be. I Want To Know Why.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

A Neat And Orderly Laboratory Is Unlikely. It Is, After All, So Much A Place Of False Starts And Multiple Attempts.

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

The Spell Of Power Never Quite Releases Its Hold.

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.

Finished Products Are For Decadent Minds.

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

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.

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

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

Where Any Answer Is Possible, All Answers Are Meaningless.

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."

Radiation, Unlike Smoking, Drinking, And Overeating, Gives No Pleasure, So The Possible Victims Object.

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

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.

You Can Prove Anything You Want By Coldly Logical Reason---if You Pick The Proper Postulates.

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

I'm An Indoors Person. I'm Not Afraid Of The Outdoors And I Penetrate It Easily And Cheerfully. However, I Must Admit I Like Central Park Better Than The Wilderness, And I Like The Canyons Of Manhattan Better Than Central Park, And I Like The Interior Of My Apartment Better Than The Canyons Of Manhattan, And I Like My Two Rooms Better With The Shades Down At All Times Than With The Shades Up. I'm Not An Agoraphobe At All, But I Am A Claustrophile, If You See The Distinction.

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

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

All Of A Sudden, Space Isn't Friendly. All Of A Sudden, It's A Place Where People Can Die. . . . Many More People Are Going To Die. But We Can't Explore Space If The Requirement Is That There Be No Casualties; We Can't Do Anything If The Requirement Is That There Be No Casualties.

At Odd And Unpredictable Times, We Cling In Fright To The Past .

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 Bible Contains Legendary, Historical, And Ethical Contents. It Is Quite Possible To Consider Them Separately, And One Doesn't Have To Accept The Legends In Order To Get The Ethics. Fundamentalists Make A Grave Mistake To Insist On The Letter Of The Writings, Because They Drive Away Many Who Can't Swallow The Adam-and-eve Bit.

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.

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.

There Are Many Aspects Of The Universe That Still Cannot Be Explained Satisfactorily By Science; But Ignorance Implies Only Ignorance That May Someday Be Conquered. To Surrender To Ignorance And Call It God Has Always Been Premature, And It Remains Premature Today.

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

Grip The Nettle Firmly And It Will Become A Stick With Which To Beat Your Enemy.

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

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.

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 Lasts In The Reader's Mind Is Not The Phrase But The Effect The Phrase Created: Laughter, Tears, Pain, Joy. If The Phrase Is Not Affecting The Reader, What's It Doing There? Make It Do Its Job Or Cut It Without Mercy Or Remorse.

As Artists And Traders In Medieval Cities Began To Form Organizations, They Instituted Tough Initiation Ceremonies. Journeymen In Bergen, Norway, Were Shoved Down A Chimney, Thrown Three Times Into The Sea, And Soundly Whipped. Such Rites Made Belonging To The Guild Or Corporation More Precious To Those Who Were Accepted, And Survived.

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.

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

Single Relationship

Tens Of Millions Of Americans Who Neither Know Or Understand The Actual Arguments For, Or Even Against, Evolution, March In The Army Of The Night With Their Bibles Held High

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.

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.

There’s Nothing To It. All You Have To Do Is Take A Close Look At Yourself And You Will Understand Everyone Else. We’re In No Way Different Ourselves... You Show Me Someone Who Can’t Understand People And I’ll Show You Someone Who Has Built Up A False Image Of Himself.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Coincidence In Life

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

Many A Prophecy, By The Mere Force Of Its Being Believed, Is Transmuted To Fact.

Law Of Attraction

We All Know We Fall. Newton's Discovery Was That The Moon Falls, Too-and By The Same Rule That We Do.

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.

At Two-tenths The Speed Of Light, Dust And Atoms Might Not Do Significant Damage Even In A Voyage Of 40 Years, But The Faster You Go, The Worse It Is--space Begins To Become Abrasive. When You Begin To Approach The Speed Of Light, Hydrogen Atoms Become Cosmic-ray Particles, And They Will Fry The Crew. ...so 60,000 Kilometers Per Second May Be The Practical Speed Limit For Space Travel.

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

It Was Childish To Feel Disappointed, But Childishness Comes Almost As Naturally To A Man As To A Child.

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.

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

While He Lives, He Must Think; While He Thinks, He Must Dream.

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.

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.

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

People Think Of Education As Something That They Can Finish.

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.

The Cure For Advanced Gullibility Is To Go To Sleep And Consider Matters Again The Next Day.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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.

To Insult Someone We Call Him 'bestial. For Deliberate Cruelty And Nature, 'human' Might Be The Greater Insult.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Computerization Eliminates The Middleman

Now Any Dogma, Based Primarily On Faith And Emotionalism, Is A Dangerous Weapon To Use On Others, Since It Is Almost Impossible To Guarantee That The Weapon Will Never Be Turned On The User.

Guarantees That

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.

Past Glories Are Poor Feeding.

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

When People Thought The Earth Was Flat, They Were Wrong. When People Thought The Earth Was Spherical, They Were Wrong. But If You Think That Thinking The Earth Is Spherical Is Just As Wrong As Thinking The Earth Is Flat, Then Your View Is Wronger Than Both Of Them Put Together.

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

All Evil Is Good Become Cancerous.

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

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.

Scientists Expect To Be Improved On And Corrected; They Hope To Be

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

All The Suffering That Humanity Ever Knew Can Be Traced To The One Fact That No Man In The History Of The Galaxy ... Could Really Understand One Another. Every Human Being Lived Behind An Impenetrable Wall Of Choking Mist Within Which No Other But He Existed.

The Young Specialist In English Lit, ...lectured Me Severely On The Fact That In Every Century People Have Thought They Understood The Universe At Last, And In Every Century They Were Proved To Be Wrong. It Follows That The One Thing We Can Say About Our Modern "knowledge" Is That It Is Wrong.

The First Law Of Dietetics Seems To Be: If It Tastes Good, It's Bad For You.

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