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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.

-Isaac Asimov

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I Type 90 Words

Isaac Asimov

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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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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[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.

Was There Anything More Exciting In Life Than Seeking Answers?

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?

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.)

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

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

Coincidence In Life

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.

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

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

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

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.

There Is No More Desire To Live Past One's Time Than To Die Before It.

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

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

Early In My School Career, I Turned Out To Be An Incorrigible Disciplinary Problem. I Could Understand What The Teacher Was Saying As Fast As She Could Say It, I Found Time Hanging Heavy, So I Would Occasionally Talk To My Neighbor. That Was My Great Crime, I Talked In School.

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.

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

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

Man's Greatest Asset Is The Unsettled Mind.

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

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.

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

The Vast Majority, Who Believe In Astrology And Think That The Planets Have Nothing Better To Do Than Form A Code That Will Tell Them Whether Tomorrow Is A Good Day To Close A Business Deal Or Not, Become All The More Excited And Enthusiastic.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

To Make Discoveries, You Have To Be Curious About Why The Universe Is The Way It Is.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

The Downtrodden Are More Religious Than The Satisfied.

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

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

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

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...

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

If There Is A Category Of Human Being For Whom His Work Ought To Speak For Itself, It Is The Writer.

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.

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?

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

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

People Are Entirely Too Disbelieving Of Coincidence.

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

Not Good Enough

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.

No One Suggests That Writing About Science Will Turn The Entire World Into A Model Of Judgment And Creative Thought. It Will Be Enough If They Spread The Knowledge As Widely As Possible.

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

All Life Is Nucleic Acid; The Rest Is Commentary.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

The Fall Of Empire, Gentlemen, Is A Massive Thing, However, And Not Easily Fought. It Is Dictated By A Rising Bureaucracy, A Receding Initiative, A Freezing Of Caste, A Damming Of Curiosity — A Hundred Other Factors. It Has Been Going On, As I Have Said, For Centuries, And It Is Too Majestic And Massive A Movement To Stop.

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

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.

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.

It Takes More Than Capital To Swing Business. You've Got To Have The A. I. D. Degree To Get By - Advertising, Initiative, And Dynamics.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Although The Time Of Death Is Approaching Me, I Am Not Afraid Of Dying And Going To Hell Or (what Would Be Considerably Worse) Going To The Popularized Version Of Heaven. I Expect Death To Be Nothingness And, For Removing Me From All Possible Fears Of Death, I Am Thankful To Atheism.

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

There Seems To Be A Feeling That Anything That Is Natural Is Good. Strychnine Is Natural.

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

Characteristics

How Many People Is The Earth Able To Sustain?

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.

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.

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

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

It's The Writing That Teaches You.

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.

Education Isn't Something You Can Finish

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

Law Of Attraction

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.

Theories Are Not So Much Wrong As Incomplete

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

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

Dreams May Be Impossible, Yet Still Be Dreamed.

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.

Saying Something Is 'too Bad' Is Easy. You Say You Disapprove, Which Makes You A Nice Person, And Then You Can Go About Your Business And Not Be Interested Anymore. It's A Lot Worse Than 'too Bad.' It's Against Everything Decent And Natural.

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

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

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.

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."

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.

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

Look At Yourself

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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."

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Any Planet Is 'earth' To Those That Live On It.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

If There Is A God

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

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.

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.

I Discovered, To My Amazement, That All Through History There Had Been Resistance ... And Bitter, Exaggerated, Last-stitch Resistance ... To Every Significant Technological Change That Had Taken Place On Earth. Usually The Resistance Came From Those Groups Who Stood To Lose Influence, Status, Money...as A Result Of The Change. Although They Never Advanced This As Their Reason For Resisting It. It Was Always The Good Of Humanity That Rested Upon Their Hearts.

Technological Change

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.

The Final End Of Eternity, And The Beginning Of Infinity

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

Every Religion Seems Like A Fantasy To Outsiders, But As Holy Truth To Those Of The Faith.

People Think Of Education As Something That They Can Finish.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Finished Products Are For Decadent Minds.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Words Are A Pretty Fuzzy Substitute For Mathematical Equations.

Mathematical Equations

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

Inanimate Objects

Arthur Clarke Says That I Am First In Science And Second In Science Fiction In Accordance With An Agreement We Have Made. I Say He Is First In Science Fiction And Second In Science.

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.

Economics Is On The Side Of Humanity Now.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

In Life, Unlike Chess, The Game Continues After Checkmate.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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?"

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