Background Image

...

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.

-Isaac Asimov

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Now Any Dogma, Based

Isaac Asimov

...

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.

Views: 36977

Topic

Guarantees That

More From Isaac Asimov

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.

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

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

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

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

I Received The Fundamentals Of My Education In School, But That Was Not Enough. My Real Education, The Superstructure, The Details, The True Architecture, I Got Out Of The Public Library. For An Impoverished Child Whose Family Could Not Afford To Buy Books, The Library Was The Open Door To Wonder And Achievement, And I Can Never Be Sufficiently Grateful That I Had The Wit To Charge Through That Door And Make The Most Of It.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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?

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

It Seems To Me That God Is A Convenient Invention Of The Human Mind

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

Where Any Answer Is Possible, All Answers Are Meaningless.

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

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

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

The Intelligent Man Is Never Bored.

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

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

The 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.

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

Speech As Known To Us Was Unnecessary. A Fragment Of A Sentence Amounted Almost To A Long-winded Redundancy. A Gesture, A Grunt, The Curve Of A Facial Line--even A Significantly Timed Pause Yielded Informational Juice.

Science Doesn't Purvey Absolute Truth. Science Is A Mechanism... For Testing Your Thoughts Against The Universe.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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."

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

Characteristics

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

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

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.

All Life Is Nucleic Acid; The Rest Is Commentary.

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.

Was There Anything More Exciting In Life Than Seeking Answers?

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

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

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

Flattery Is Useful When Dealing With Youngsters.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Inanimate Objects

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.

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

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

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

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

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

The Lucky Few Who Can Be Involved In Creative Work Of Any Sort Will Be The True Elite Of Mankind, For They Alone Will Do More Than Serve A Machine.

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

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.

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.

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

I Do Not Fear Computers. I Fear The Lack Of Them.

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.

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?

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

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?

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Now Remember, Kids, The Internet Is Serious Business.

Serious Business

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

Writing Is My Only Interest. Even Speaking Is An Interruption.

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.

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.

It's The Writing That Teaches You.

Happiness Is Doing It Rotten Your Own Way.

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.

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

There Is Nothing So Eternally Adhesive As The Memory Of Power.

People Are Entirely Too Disbelieving Of Coincidence.

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

Dreams May Be Impossible, Yet Still Be Dreamed.

Intelligence Is An Extremely Subtle Concept. It's A Kind Of Understanding That Flourishes If It's Combined With A Good Memory, But Exists Anyway Even In The Absence Of Good Memory. It's The Ability To Draw Consequences From Causes, To Make Correct Inferences, To Foresee What Might Be The Result, To Work Out Logical Problems, To Be Reasonable, Rational, To Have The Ability To Understand The Solution From Perhaps Insufficient Information. You Know When A Person Is Intelligent, But You Can Be Easily Fooled If You Are Not Yourself Intelligent.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Science Is Dangerous. There Is No Question But That Poison Gas, Genetic Engineering, And Nuclear Weapons And Power Stations Are Terrifying. It May Be That Civilization Is Falling Apart And The World We Know Is Coming To An End. In That Case, Why No Turn To Religion And Look Forward To The Day Of Judgment, ... [being] Lifted Into Eternal Bliss ... [and] Watching The Scoffers And Disbelievers Writhe Forever In Torment.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Fifty Years," I Hackneyed, "is A Long Time." "not When You're Looking Back At Them," She Said. "you Wonder How They Vanished So Quickly.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Man's Greatest Asset Is The Unsettled Mind.

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

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

The Downtrodden Are More Religious Than The Satisfied.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

And Above All Things, Never Think That You're Not Good Enough Yourself. A Man Should Never Think That. My Belief Is That In Life People Will Take You At Your Own Reckoning.

Believe In Yourself

The 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.

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?"

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

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?

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

Theories Are Not So Much Wrong As Incomplete

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not Good Enough

How Many People Is The Earth Able To Sustain?

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

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

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

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

Science Can Amuse And Fascinate Us All, But It Is Engineering That Changes The World.

I Am The Beneficiary Of A Lucky Break In The Genetic Sweepstakes.

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

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

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.

In All The Known History Of Mankind, Advances Have Been Made Primarily In Physical Technology; In The Capacity Of Handling The Inanimate World About Man. Control Of Self And Society Has Been Left To To Chance Or To The Vague Gropings Of Intuitive Ethical Systems Based On Inspiration And Emotion. As A Result No Culture Of Greater Stability Than About Fifty-five Percent Has Ever Existed, And These Only As The Result Of Great Human Misery.

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.

Scientific Truth Is Beyond Loyalty And Disloyalty.

Violence Is The Last Refuge Of The Incompetent.

Education Isn't Something You Can Finish

There Are So Many Benefits To Be Derived From Space Exploration And Exploitation; Why Not Take What Seems To Me The Only Chance Of Escaping What Is Otherwise The Sure Destruction Of All That Humanity Has Struggled To Achieve For 50,000 Years?

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

The Final End Of Eternity, And The Beginning Of Infinity

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

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.

Trending Author

Sarah McLachlan

Mariska Hargitay

Category