Top 500 Isaac Asimov Quotes (2023 Update)
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151. “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.”

— Isaac Asimov

152. “Every religion seems like a fantasy to outsiders, but as holy truth to those of the faith.”

— Isaac Asimov

153. “Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics,” and here they are: 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.”

— Isaac Asimov

154. “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.”

— Isaac Asimov

155. “Human beings sometimes find a kind of pleasure in nursing painful emotions, in blaming themselves without reason or even against reason.”

— Isaac Asimov

156. “We all know we fall. Newton’s discovery was that the moon falls, too-and by the same rule that we do.”

— Isaac Asimov

157. “I believe that scientific knowledge has fractal properties, that no matter how much we learn, whatever is left, however small it may seem, is just as infinitely complex as the whole was to start with. That, I think, is the secret of the Universe.”

— Isaac Asimov

158. “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.”

— Isaac Asimov

159. “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.”

— Isaac Asimov

160. “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.”

— Isaac Asimov

161. “A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”

— Isaac Asimov

162. “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.”

— Isaac Asimov

163. “Psychohistory was the quintessence of sociology; it was the science of human behavior reduced to mathematical equations. The individual human being is unpredictable, but the reactions of human mobs, Seldon found, could be treated statistically.”

— Isaac Asimov

164. “A persistent rumor has circulates in the USA: There are two intelligent races living on the surface of planet Earth: the standard people and the hungarians.”

— Isaac Asimov

165. “It’s a poor atom blaster that won’t point both ways.”

— Isaac Asimov

166. “The colonization of space is the only possible salvation of Earth.”

— Isaac Asimov

167. “Saying something is ‘too bad’ is easy. You say you disapprove, which makes you a nice person, and then you can go about your business and not be interested anymore. It’s a lot worse than ‘too bad.’ It’s against everything decent and natural.”

— Isaac Asimov

168. “Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.”

— Isaac Asimov

169. “How harmful overspecialization is. It cuts knowledge at a million points and leaves it bleeding.”

— Isaac Asimov

170. “It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.”

— Isaac Asimov

171. “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.”

— Isaac Asimov

172. “A fire-eater must eat fire even if he has to kindle it himself.”

— Isaac Asimov

173. “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.”

— Isaac Asimov

174. “At odd and unpredictable times, we cling in fright to the past .”

— Isaac Asimov

175. “The greatest inventors are unknown to us. Someone invented the wheel – but who?”

— Isaac Asimov

176. “You are never too old to learn more than you already know and to become able to do more than you already can.”

— Isaac Asimov

177. “Now any dogma, based primarily on faith and emotionalism, is a dangerous weapon to use on others, since it is almost impossible to guarantee that the weapon will never be turned on the user.”

— Isaac Asimov

178. “I never considered myself a patriot. I like to think I recognize only humanity as my nation.”

— Isaac Asimov

179. “Dreams may be impossible, yet still be dreamed.”

— Isaac Asimov

180. “Married life had taught him the futility of arguing with a female in a dark-brown mood.”

— Isaac Asimov

181. “You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason – if you pick the proper postulates.”

— Isaac Asimov

182. “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.”

— Isaac Asimov

183. “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?”

— Isaac Asimov

184. “The facts, gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching.”

— Isaac Asimov

185. “The most hopelessly stupid man is he who is not aware he is wise.”

— Isaac Asimov

186. “The Foundation has secrets. They have books, old books – so old that the language they are in is only known to a few of the top men. But the secrets are shrouded in ritual and religion, and may use them.”

— Isaac Asimov

187. “It’s not so much what you have to learn if you accept weird theories, it’s what you have to UNlearn.”

— Isaac Asimov

188. “There is no right to deny freedom to any object with a mind advanced enough to grasp the concept and desire the state.”

— Isaac Asimov

189. “Even as a youngster, though, I could not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presented danger, the solution was ignorance.”

— Isaac Asimov

190. “A knotty puzzle may hold a scientist up for a century, when it may be that a colleague has the solution already and is not even aware of the puzzle that it might solve.”

— Isaac Asimov

191. “The significant chemicals of living tissue are rickety and unstable, which is exactly what is needed for life.”

— Isaac Asimov

192. “It is the invariable lesson to humanity that distance in time, and in space as well, lends focus. It is not recorded, incidentally, that the lesson has ever been permanently learned.”

— Isaac Asimov

193. “It is enough for a Psychohistorian, as such, to know his Biostatistics and his Neurochemical Electromathematics. Some know nothing else and are fit only to be statistical technicians. But a Speaker must be able to discuss the Plan without mathematics.”

— Isaac Asimov

194. “What would I do if I knew I only had six months to live? Type faster.”

— Isaac Asimov

195. “Come, captain, we had no leadership worthy of the name then, and we faced the cleverest opponent, the heaviest armor, the strongest force of all. Yet we won by the inevitability of history.”

— Isaac Asimov

196. “The cure for advanced gullibility is to go to sleep and consider matters again the next day.”

— Isaac Asimov

197. “Scientists derive satisfaction from figuring out the puzzle. It’s about the quest, not the grail.”

— Isaac Asimov

198. “I’m forty-nine, not fifteen, and I’ve made my peace with myself. Had I been handsome and stupid when I was fifteen, or twenty-one, as, at that time in life, I wished I had been, I would undoubtedly now no longer be handsome – but I’d still be stupid. So, in the long run, I’ve won out.”

— Isaac Asimov

199. “Writing is my only interest. Even speaking is an interruption.”

— Isaac Asimov

200. “Where any answer is possible, all answers are meaningless.”

— Isaac Asimov