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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.

-Isaac Asimov

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The Three Theorems Of

Isaac Asimov

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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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

You Don't Need To Predict The Future. Just Choose A Future -- A Good Future, A Useful Future -- And Make The Kind Of Prediction That Will Alter Human Emotions And Reactions In Such A Way That The Future You Predicted Will Be Brought About. Better To Make A Good Future Than Predict A Bad One.

To Those Who Are Trained In Science, Creationism Seems A Bad Dream, A Sudden Coming Back To Life Of A Nightmare, A Renewed March Of An Army Of The Night Risen To Challenge Free Thought And Enlightenment.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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?

Why ... Did So Many People Spend Their Lives Not Trying To Find Answers To Questions -- Not Even Thinking Of Questions To Begin With? Was There Anything More Exciting In Life Than Seeking Answers?

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.

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.

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

There Is A Single Light Of Science, And To Brighten It Anywhere Is To Brighten It Everywhere.

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

Where Any Answer Is Possible, All Answers Are Meaningless.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

I Am Not Responsible For What Other People Think. I Am Responsible Only For What I Myself Think, And I Know What That Is. No Idea I've Ever Come Up With Has Ever Struck Me As A Divine Revelation. Nothing I Have Ever Observed Leads Me To Think There Is A God Watching Over Me.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

How Then To Enforce Peace? Not By Reason, Certainly, Nor By Education. If A Man Could Not Look At The Fact Of Peace And The Fact Of War And Choose The Former In Preference To The Latter, What Additional Argument Could Persuade Him? What Could Be More Eloquent As A Condemnation Of War Than War Itself? What Tremendous Feat Of Dialectic Could Carry With It A Tenth The Power Of A Single Gutted Ship With Its Ghastly Cargo?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Telling The Truth

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

Surely No Child, And Few Adults, Have Ever Watched A Bird In Flight Without Envy.

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.

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

The Human Mind Works At Low Efficiency. Twenty Percent Is The Figure Usually Given. When, Momentarily, There Is A Flash Of Greater Power, It Is Termed A Hunch, Or Insight, Or Intuition.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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