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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.

-Isaac Asimov

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What Would You Consider

Isaac Asimov

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

The World In General Disapproves Of Creativity, And To Be Creative In Public Is Particularly Bad. Even To Speculate In Public Is Rather Worrisome.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

All Life Is Nucleic Acid; The Rest Is Commentary.

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

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

Finished Products Are For Decadent Minds.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

Science Is Complex And Chilling. The Mathematical Language Of Science Is Understood By Very Few. The Vistas It Presents Are Scary-an Enormous Universe Ruled By Chance And Impersonal Rules, Empty And Uncaring, Ungraspable And Vertiginous. How Comfortable To Turn Instead To A Small World, Only A Few Thousand Years Old, And Under God's Personal; And Immediate Care; A World In Which You Are His Peculiar Concern.

Economics Is On The Side Of Humanity Now.

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?

The Spell Of Power Never Quite Releases Its Hold.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Humanity Has The Stars In Its Future, And That Future Is Too Important To Be Lost Under The Burden Of Juvenile Folly And Ignorant Superstition.

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.

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.

I Was Once Being Interviewed By Barbara Walters. In Between Two Of The Segments She Asked Me: "but What Would You Do If The Doctor Gave You Only Six Months To Live?" I Said, "type Faster." This Was Widely Quoted, But The "six Months" Was Changed To "six Minutes," Which Bothered Me. It's "six Months."

Democracy Cannot Survive Overpopulation.

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

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.

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 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?

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

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

Any Book Worth Banning Is A Book Worth Reading.

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.

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

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 Temptation Was Great To Muster What Force We Could And Put Up A Fight. It's The Easiest Way Out, And The Most Satisfactory To Self-respect--but, Nearly Invariably, The Stupidest.

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

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

Theories Are Not So Much Wrong As Incomplete

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

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

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

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

Not Good Enough

Where Any Answer Is Possible, All Answers Are Meaningless.

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'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.

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

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

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.

The Tyranny That Now Exists Is Actual. That Which May Exist In The Future Is Potential. If We Are Always To Draw Back From Change With The Thought That The Change May Be For The Worse, Then There Is No Hope At All Of Ever Escaping Injustice.

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

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

Thinking Is The Activity I Love Best, And Writing To Me Is Simply Thinking Through My Fingers. I Can Write Up To 18 Hours A Day. Typing 90 Words A Minute, I've Done Better Than 50 Pages A Day. Nothing Interferes With My Concentration. You Could Put An Orgy In My Office And I Wouldn't Look Up-well, Maybe Once.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Man's Greatest Asset Is The Unsettled Mind.

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]

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.

The Fundamentalists Deny That Evolution Has Taken Place; They Deny That The Earth And The Universe As A Whole Are More Than A Few Thousand Years Old, And So On. There Is Ample Scientific Evidence That The Fundamentalists Are Wrong In These Matters, And That Their Notions Of Cosmogony Have About As Much Basis In Fact As The Tooth Fairy Has.

I 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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

The Master Created Humans First As The Lowest Type, Most Easily Formed. Gradually, He Replaced Them By Robots, The Next Higher Step, And Finally He Created Me, To Take The Place Of The Last Humans.

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.

Happiness Is Doing It Rotten Your Own Way.

So The Universe Is Not Quite As You Thought It Was. You'd Better Rearrange Your Beliefs, Then. Because You Certainly Can't Rearrange The Universe.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Past Glories Are Poor Feeding.

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.

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.

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

People Are Entirely Too Disbelieving Of Coincidence.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

There Is As Yet Insufficient Data For A Meaningful Answer.

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.

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

Scientific Truth Is Beyond Loyalty And Disloyalty.

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.

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.

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

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

Plate Glass... Has No Beauty Of Its Own. Ideally, You Ought Not To Be Able To See It At All, But Through It You Can See All That Is Happening Outside. That Is The Equivalent Of Writing That Is Plain And Unadorned. Ideally, In Reading Such Writing, You Are Not Even Aware That You Are Reading. Ideas And Events Seem Merely To Flow From The Mind Of The Writer Into That Of The Reader Without Any Barrier Between. I Hope That Is What Is Happening When You Read This Book

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

There Is No Right To Deny Freedom To Any Object With A Mind Advanced Enough To Grasp The Concept And Desire The State. -(from "the Bicentennial Man) Story)

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

It Is Precisely Because It Is Fashionable For Americans To Know No Science, Even Though They May Be Well Educated Otherwise, That They So Easily Fall Prey To Nonsense.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Violence Is The Last Refuge Of The Incompetent.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Individual Science Fiction Stories May Seem As Trivial As Ever To The Blinder Critics And Philosophers Of Today - But The Core Of Science Fiction, Its Essence Has Become Crucial To Our Salvation If We Are To Be Saved At All.

Fiction Stories

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

Knowledge Is Indivisible. When People Grow Wise In One Direction, They Are Sure To Make It Easier For Themselves To Grow Wise In Other Directions As Well. On The Other Hand, When They Split Up Knowledge, Concentrate On Their Own Field, And Scorn And Ignore Other Fields, They Grow Less Wise - Even In Their Own Field.

I 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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Once You Get It Into Your Head That Somebody Is Controlling Events, You Can Interpret Everything In That Light And Find No Reasonable Certainty Anywhere.

Science Is Uncertain. Theories Are Subject To Revision; Observations Are Open To A Variety Of Interpretations, And Scientists Quarrel Amongst Themselves. This Is Disillusioning For Those Untrained In The Scientific Method, Who Thus Turn To The Rigid Certainty Of The Bible Instead. There Is Something Comfortable About A View That Allows For No Deviation And That Spares You The Painful Necessity Of Having To Think.

When People Thought The Earth Was Flat, They Were Wrong. When People Thought The Earth Was Spherical, They Were Wrong. But If You Think That Thinking The Earth Is Spherical Is Just As Wrong As Thinking The Earth Is Flat, Then Your View Is Wronger Than Both Of Them Put Together.

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

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?

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

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

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.

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

Dreams May Be Impossible, Yet Still Be Dreamed.

The Whole Business Is The Crudest Sort Of Stratagem, Since We Have No Way Of Foreseeing It To The End. It Is A Mere Paying Out Of Rope On The Chance That Somewhere Along The Length Of It Will Be A Noose.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Was There Anything More Exciting In Life Than Seeking Answers?

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.

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.

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?"

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

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 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 World Is Being Americanized And Technologized To Its Limits, And That Makes It Dull For Some People. Reaching The Moon Restores The Frontier And Gives Us The Lands Beyond.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Characteristics

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