Background Image

...

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.

-Isaac Asimov

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Suppose That We Are

Isaac Asimov

...

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.

Views: 54072

Topic

More From Isaac Asimov

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.

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

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 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.

Oh, For A Pin That Would Puncture Pretension!

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

Past Glories Are Poor Feeding.

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.

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

[o]ur Statesmen, Our Businessmen, Our Everyman Must Take On A Science Fictional Way Of Thinking.

Inevitable Change

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

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."

Whenever I Have Endured Or Accomplished Some Difficult Task -- Such As Watching Television, Going Out Socially Or Sleeping -- I Always Look Forward To Rewarding Myself With The Small Pleasure Of Getting Back To My Typewriter And Writing Something.

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

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

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 Never Can Be A Man So Lost As One Who Is Lost In The Vast And Intricate Corridors Of His Own Lonely Mind, Where None May Reach And None May Save.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Intelligent Man Is Never Bored.

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

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.

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

I Prefer Rationalism To Atheism. The Question Of God And Other Objects-of-faith Are Outside Reason And Play No Part In Rationalism, Thus You Don't Have To Waste Your Time In Either Attacking Or Defending.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Law Of Attraction

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

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.

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

The Final End Of Eternity, And The Beginning Of Infinity

Flattery Is Useful When Dealing With Youngsters.

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

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

Scientific Truth Is Beyond Loyalty And Disloyalty.

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

If There Is A God

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Love Life Seems To Be That Factor Which Requires The Largest Quantity Of Magical Tinkering.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

Democracy Cannot Survive Overpopulation.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

And [asimov]'ll Sign Anything, Hardbacks, Softbacks, Other People's Books, Scraps Of Paper. Inevitably Someone Handed Him A Blank Check On The Occasion When I Was There, And He Signed That Without As Much As A Waver To His Smile — Except That He Signed: 'harlan Ellison.

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 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?

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

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.

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.

It Is Change, Continuing Change, Inevitable Change, That Is The Dominant Factor In Society Today. No Sensible Decision Can Be Made Any Longer Without Taking Into Account Not Only The World As It Is, But The World As It Will Be. This, In Turn, Means That Our Statesmen, Our Businessmen, Our Every Man Must Take On A Science Fictional Way Of Thinking.

I, 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Dreams May Be Impossible, Yet Still Be Dreamed.

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

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.

I Don't Believe In Personal Immortality; The Only Way I Expect To Have Some Version Of Such A Thing Is Through My Books.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Where Any Answer Is Possible, All Answers Are Meaningless.

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?

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.

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.

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

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]

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

Nothing Has To Be True, But Everything Has To Sound True.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Economics Is On The Side Of Humanity Now.

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

Finished Products Are For Decadent Minds.

Courtiers Don't Take Wagers Against The King's Skill. There Is The Deadly Danger Of Winning.

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

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

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

Theories Are Not So Much Wrong As Incomplete

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

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

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.

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

Not Good Enough

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

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

People Think Of Education As Something That They Can Finish.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

To Any Who Know The Star Field Well From One Certain Reference Point, Stars Are As Individual As People. Jump Ten Parsecs, However, And Not Even Your Own Sun Is Recognizable.

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.

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

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.

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.

I Am An Atheist, Out And Out. It Took Me A Long Time To Say It. I've Been An Atheist For Years And Years, But Somehow I Felt It Was Intellectually Unrespectable To Say That One Is An Atheist, Because It Assumed Knowledge That One Didn't Have. Somehow It Was Better To Say One Was A Humanist Or Agnostic. I Don't Have The Evidence To Prove That God Doesn't Exist, But I So Strongly Suspect That He Doesn't That I Don't Want To Waste My Time.

All Life Is Nucleic Acid; The Rest Is Commentary.

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

Characteristics

Trending Author

Category