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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.

-Isaac Asimov

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The Peace And Joy

Isaac Asimov

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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.

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

Not Good Enough

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Inanimate Objects

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.

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

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

Man's Greatest Asset Is The Unsettled Mind.

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.

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.

Words Are A Pretty Fuzzy Substitute For Mathematical Equations.

Mathematical Equations

The Dangers That Face The World Can, Every One Of Them, Be Traced Back To Science. The Salvations That May Save The World Will, Every One Of Them, Be Traced Back To Science.

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

Life Would Be Impossible On Such A Planet. It Wouldn't Get Enough Heat And Light, And If It Rotated There Would Be Total Darkness Half Of Every Day. There Wouldn't Be Any Native Inhabitants. You Couldn't Expect Life - Which Is Fundamentally Dependent On Light - To Develop Under Such Extreme Conditions Of Light Deprivation. Half Of Every Axial Rotation Spent In Darkness! No, Nothing Could Exist Under Conditions Like That.

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

Before Another Century Is Done It Will Be Hard For People To Imagine A Time When Humanity Was Confined To One World, And It Will Seem To Them Incredible That There Was Ever Anybody Who Doubted The Value Of Space And Wanted To Turn His Or Her Back On The Universe.

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.

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.

The Three Theorems Of Psychohistorical Quantitivity: The Population Under Scrutiny Is Oblivious To The Existence Of The Science Of Psychohistory. The Time Periods Dealt With Are In The Region Of 3 Generations. The Population Must Be In The Billions (±75 Billions) For A Statistical Probability To Have A Psychohistorical Validity.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Even As A Youngster, Though, I Could Not Bring Myself To Believe That If Knowledge Presented Danger, The Solution Was Ignorance. To Me, It Always Seemed That The Solution Had To Be Wisdom. You Did Not Refuse To Look At Danger, Rather You Learned How To Handle It Safely.

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

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

Having Reached 451 Books As Of Now Doesn't Help The Situation. If I Were To Be Dying Now, I Would Be Murmuring, "too Bad! Only Four Hundred Fifty-one." (those Would Be My Next-to-last Words. The Last Ones Will Be: "i Love You, Janet.") [they Were. -janet.]

To Bring About Destruction By Overcrowding, Mass Starvation, Anarchy, The Destruction Of Our Most Cherished Values, There Is No Need To Do Anything. We Need Only Do Nothing Except What Comes Naturally, And Breed. And How Easy It Is To Do Nothing

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

Computerization Eliminates The Middleman

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Coincidence In Life

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.

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

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

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.

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

Look At Yourself

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.

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

Past Glories Are Poor Feeding.

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.

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

Happiness Is Doing It Rotten Your Own Way.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Democracy Cannot Survive Overpopulation.

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.

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

It Is The Nature Of The Mind That Makes Individuals Kin, And The Differences In The Shape, Form Or Manner Of The Material Atoms Out Of Whose Intricate Relationships That Mind Is Built Are Altogether Trivial.

It Is The Obvious Which Is So Difficult To See Most Of The Time. People Say 'it's As Plain As The Nose On Your Face.' But How Much Of The Nose On Your Face Can You See, Unless Someone Holds A Mirror Up To You?

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

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

I Stand Four-square For Reason, And Object To What Seems To Me To Be Irrationality, Whatever The Source. If You Are On My Side In This, I Must Warn You That The Army Of The Night Has The Advantage Of Overwhelming Numbers, And, By Its Very Nature, Is Immune To Reason, So That It Is Entirely Unlikely That You And I Can Win Out. We Will Always Remain A Tiny And Probably Hopeless Minority, But Let Us Never Tire Of Presenting Our View, And Of Fighting The Good Fight For The Right.

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

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

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

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.

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

God, How That Stings! I've Spent A Lifetime Loving Science Fiction And Now I Find That You Must Expect Nothing Of Something That's Just Science Fiction.

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.

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

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

Scientific Truth Is Beyond Loyalty And Disloyalty.

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

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.

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

I Wish That I Could Say I Was Optimistic About The Human Race. I Love Us All, But We Are So Stupid And Shortsighted That I Wonder If We Can Lift Our Eyes To The World About Us Long Enough Not To Commit Suicide.

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

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

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

University President: Why Is It That You Physicists Always Require So Much Expensive Equipment? Now The Department Of Mathematics Requires Nothing But Money For Paper, Pencils, And Erasers . . . And The Department Of Philosophy Is Better Still. It Doesn't Even Ask For Erasers.

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.

Violence Is The Last Refuge Of The Incompetent.

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

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.

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.

All Life Is Nucleic Acid; The Rest Is Commentary.

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

Was There Anything More Exciting In Life Than Seeking Answers?

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.

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.

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

Where Any Answer Is Possible, All Answers Are Meaningless.

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.

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

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

Inevitable Change

It Is Remarkable, Hardin, How The Religion Of Science Has Grabbed Hold.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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."

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

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

However, I Continue To Try And I Continue, Indefatigably, To Reach Out. There's No Way I Can Single-handedly Save The World Or, Perhaps, Even Make A Perceptible Difference - But How Ashamed I Would Be To Let A Day Pass Without Making One More Effort.

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.

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.

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.

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

One Might Accept Death Reasoningly, With Every Aspect Of The Conscious Mind, But The Body Was A Brute Beast That Knew Nothing Of Reason.

All Evil Is Good Become Cancerous.

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.

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.

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.

How Many People Is The Earth Able To Sustain?

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

To All My Gentle Readers Who Have Treated Me With Love For Over 30 Years, I Must Say Farewell. 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, But That's Not The Way It Worked Out. I Have Had A Long And Happy Life And I Have No Complaints About The Ending, Thereof, And So Farewell - Farewell.

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

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.

I Have Been Told That A Young Would-be Composer Wrote To Mozart Asking Advice About How To Compose A Symphony. Mozart Responded That A Symphony Was A Complex And Demanding Form And It Would Be Better To Start With Something Simpler. The Young Man Protested, 'but, Herr Mozart, You Wrote Symphonies When You Were Younger Than I Am Now.' Mozart Replied, 'i Never Asked How.

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

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.

The Downtrodden Are More Religious Than The Satisfied.

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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.

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.'

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Myth Or Legend Is Simply Not Made Up Out Of A Vacuum. Nothing Is--or Can Be. Somehow There Is A Kernel Of Truth Behind It, However Distorted That Might Be.

There Is As Yet Insufficient Data For A Meaningful Answer.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Any Book Worth Banning Is A Book Worth Reading.

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

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

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.

Nonsense! The Most Hopelessly Stupid Man Is He Who Is Not Aware That He Is Wise.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

The Spell Of Power Never Quite Releases Its Hold.

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

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

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

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.

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.)

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