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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.

-Isaac Asimov

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I, On The Other

Isaac Asimov

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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.

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One Would Suppose That The Battle For Religious Liberty Was Won In The United States Two Hundred Years Ago. However, In The Time Since, And Right Now, Powerful Voices Are Always Raised In Favor Of Bigotry And Thought Control. It Is Useful, Then, To Have A Compendium Of The Thoughts Of Great Men And Women Of All Faiths (and Of None) On The Subject, To Convince Us That We Men And Woman Of Freedom Are Not And Never Have Been Alone.

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

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

Boasts Are Wind And Deeds Are Hard.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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]

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

Look At Yourself

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.

All Sorts Of Computer Errors Are Now Turning Up. You'd Be Surprised To Know The Number Of Doctors Who Claim They Are Treating Pregnant Men.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Science Is A Mechanism, A Way Of Trying To Improve Your Knowledge Of Nature. It's A System For Testing Your Thoughts Against The Universe, And Seeing Whether They Match.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

People Who Think They Know Everything Are A Great Annoyance To Those Of Us Who Do.

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.

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.

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.

Words Are A Pretty Fuzzy Substitute For Mathematical Equations.

Mathematical Equations

Science Is Complex And Chilling. The Mathematical Language Of Science Is Understood By Very Few. The Vistas It Presents Are Scary-an Enormous Universe Ruled By Chance And Impersonal Rules, Empty And Uncaring, Ungraspable And Vertiginous. How Comfortable To Turn Instead To A Small World, Only A Few Thousand Years Old, And Under God's Personal; And Immediate Care; A World In Which You Are His Peculiar Concern.

Mathematicians Deal With Large Numbers Sometimes, But Never In Their Income.

Past Glories Are Poor Feeding.

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

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

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

Science Is A Set Of Rules To Keep Us From Telling Lies To Each Other. All Scientists Really Have Is A Reputation For Telling The Truth.

Telling The Truth

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."

I Never Considered Myself A Patriot. I Like To Think I Recognize Only Humanity As My Nation.

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

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

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

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.

Scientific Truth Is Beyond Loyalty And Disloyalty.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

I Made Up My Mind Long Ago To Follow One Cardinal Rule In All My Writing — To Be Clear.

All Life Is Nucleic Acid; The Rest Is Commentary.

It Was Obvious That Bigotry Was Never A One-way Operation, That Hatred Bred Hatred!

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

Surely, If We Take On Thinking Partners - Or, At The Least, Thinking Servants - In The Form Of Machines, We Will Be More Comfortable With Them, And Will Relate To Them More Easily, If They Are Shaped Like Humans. It Will Be Easier To Be Friends With Human-shaped Robots Than With Specialized Machines Of Unrecognizable Shape. And I Sometimes Think That, In The Desperate Straits Of Humanity Today, We Would Be Grateful To Have Nonhuman Friends, Even If They Are Only The Friends We Build Ourselves.

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.

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.

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

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

Rejection Slips, Or Form Letters, However Tactfully Phrased, Are Lacerations Of The Soul, If Not Quite Inventions Of The Devil-but There Is No Way Around Them.

There's So Much Knowledge To Be Had That Specialists Cling To Their Specialties As A Shield Against Having To Know Anything About Anything Else. They Avoid Being Drowned.

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

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

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.

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.

Was There Anything More Exciting In Life Than Seeking Answers?

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.

The Day You Stop Learning Is The Day You Begin Decaying.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

They Don't Want Equal Time - They Want All The Time There Is.

The Spell Of Power Never Quite Releases Its Hold.

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.

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.

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

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

Individual Science Fiction Stories May Seem As Trivial As Ever To The Blinder Critics And Philosophers Of Today - But The Core Of Science Fiction, Its Essence Has Become Crucial To Our Salvation If We Are To Be Saved At All.

Fiction Stories

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.

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

Happiness Is Doing It Rotten Your Own Way.

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

The World Is Being Americanized And Technologized To Its Limits, And That Makes It Dull For Some People. Reaching The Moon Restores The Frontier And Gives Us The Lands Beyond.

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 First Step In Making Rabbit Stew Is Catching The Rabbit.

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

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

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

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

Characteristics

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

I Figure That If God Actually Does Exist, He Is Big Enough To Understand An Honest Difference Of Opinion.

Until I Became A Published Writer, I Remained Completely Ignorant Of Books On How To Write And Courses On The Subject ... They Would Have Spoiled My Natural Style; Made Me Observe Caution; Would Have Hedged Me With Rules.

It's The Writing That Teaches You.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The Closer To The Truth, The Better The Lie, And The Truth Itself, When It Can Be Used, Is The Best Lie.

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

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

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.

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.

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

The Essential Building Block Is...the True Love That Is Impossible To Define For Those Who Have Never Experienced It And Unnecessary To Define For Those Who Have.

Any Book Worth Banning Is A Book Worth Reading.

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

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

Law Of Attraction

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.

People Think Of Education As Something That They Can Finish.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Postulates Are Based On Assumption And Adhered To By Faith. Nothing In The Universe Can Shake Them.

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

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."

Although We Will Hate And Fight The Machines, We Will Be Supplanted Anyway, And Rightly So, For The Intelligent Machines To Which We Will Give Birth May, Better Than We, Carry On The Striving Toward The Goal Of Understanding And Using The Universe, Climbing To Heights We Ourselves Could Never Aspire To.

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

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

Science Does Not Promise Absolute Truth, Nor Does It Consider That Such A Thing Necessarily Exists. Science Does Not Even Promise That Everything In The Universe Is Amenable To The Scientific Process.

I Am Not A Speed Reader. I Am A Speed Understander.

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

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

How Many People Is The Earth Able To Sustain?

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

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

Writing Is A Lonely Job. Even If A Writer Socializes Regularly, When He Gets Down To The Real Business Of His Life, It Is He And His Type Writer Or Word Processor. No One Else Is Or Can Be Involved In The Matter.

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

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.

I Do Not Use Airplanes. They Strike Me As Unsporting. You Can Have An Automobile Accident-and Survive. You Can Be On A Sinking Ship-and Survive. You Can Be In An Earthquake, Fire, Volcanic Eruption, Tornado, What You Will-and Survive. But If Your Plane Crashes, You Do Not Survive. And I Say The Heck With It.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Coincidence In Life

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?

[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.

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

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

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.

If You Have Talent, You Will Receive Some Measure Of Success - But Only If You Persist.

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.

It's Your Fiction That Interests Me. Your Studies Of The Interplay Of Human Motives And Emotion.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Violence Is The Last Refuge Of The Incompetent.

Considering What Human Beings Do And Have Done To Human Beings (and To Other Living Things As Well) ... I Can Never Imagine What The Devil People Think Computers Can Add To The Horrors.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Old People Think Young People Haven't Learned About Love. Young People Think Old People Have Forgotten About Love.

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

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 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

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.

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.)

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

If There Is A God

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.

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.

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.

Man's Greatest Asset Is The Unsettled Mind.

Old Men Tend To Forget What Thought Was Like In Their Youth; They Forget The Quickness Of The Mental Jump, The Daring Of The Youthful Intuition, The Agility Of The Fresh Insight. They Become Accustomed To The More Plodding Varieties Of Reason, And Because This Is More Than Made Up By The Accumulation Of Experience, Old Men Think Themselves Wiser Than The Young.

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.

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

Now Remember, Kids, The Internet Is Serious Business.

Serious Business

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.

Democracy Cannot Survive Overpopulation.

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.

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.]

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?

All Evil Is Good Become Cancerous.

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