Top 500 Isaac Asimov Quotes (2023 Update)
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301. “Why is it, I wonder, that anyone who displays superior athletic ability is an object of admiration to his classmates, while one who displays superior mental ability is an object of hatred?”

— Isaac Asimov

302. “That’s the harm of Close Encounters: that it convinces tens of millions that that’s what just science fiction is.”

— Isaac Asimov

303. “Actions such as his could come only from a robot, or from a very honorable and decent human being. But you see, you can’t differentiate between a robot and the very best of humans.”

— Isaac Asimov

304. “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.”

— Isaac Asimov

305. “Grip the nettle firmly and it will become a stick with which to beat your enemy.”

— Isaac Asimov

306. “No matter how carefully records are kept and filed and computerized, they grow fuzzy with time. Stories grow by accretion. Tales accumulate – like dust. The longer the time lapse, the dustier the history – until it degenerates into fables.”

— Isaac Asimov

307. “There is nothing so eternally adhesive as the memory of power.”

— Isaac Asimov

308. “How many people is the earth able to sustain?”

— Isaac Asimov

309. “I am the beneficiary of a lucky break in the genetic sweepstakes.”

— Isaac Asimov

310. “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.”

— Isaac Asimov

311. “Tens of millions of Americans who neither know or understand the actual arguments for, or even against, evolution, march in the Army of the Night with their Bibles held high.”

— Isaac Asimov

312. “The machines do not solve problems with greater insight than men do, only faster. Only faster!”

— Isaac Asimov

313. “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.”

— Isaac Asimov

314. “The spell of power never quite releases its hold.”

— Isaac Asimov

315. “Scientific method, hell! No wonder the Galaxy was going to pot.”

— Isaac Asimov

316. “Suppose we were to teach creationism. What would be the content of the teaching? Merely that a creator formed the universe and all species of life ready-made? Nothing more? No details?”

— Isaac Asimov

317. “What kind of a ridiculous animal are we to be lords of the world after the dinosaurs had failed? Sure, we’re intelligent, but what’s intelligence? We think it is important because we have it. If the Tyrannosaurus could have picked out the one quality that he thought would ensure species domination, it would be size and strength. And he would make a better case for it. He lasted longer than we’re likely to.”

— Isaac Asimov

318. “It seems to me that God is a convenient invention of the human mind.”

— Isaac Asimov

319. “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.”

— Isaac Asimov

320. “The psychohistoric trend of a planet-full of people contains a huge inertia. To be changed it must be met with something possessing a similar inertia. Either as many people must be concerned, or if the number of people be relatively small, enormous time for change must be allowed.”

— Isaac Asimov

321. “There’s no record in the history of the Galaxy of any society being so foolish as to use nuclear explosions as a weapon of war.”

— Isaac Asimov

322. “John Dalton’s records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.”

— Isaac Asimov

323. “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.”

— Isaac Asimov

324. “Schiller. A German dramatist of three centuries ago. In a play about Joan of Arc, he said, ‘Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.’ I’m no god and I’ll contend no longer.”

— Isaac Asimov

325. “It is in meeting the great tests that mankind can most successfully rise to great heights. Out of danger and restless insecurity comes the force that pushes mankind to newer and loftier conquests.”

— Isaac Asimov

326. “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.”

— Isaac Asimov

327. “Radiation, unlike smoking, drinking, and overeating, gives no pleasure, so the possible victims object.”

— Isaac Asimov

328. “If a conclusion is not poetically balanced, it cannot be scientifically true.”

— Isaac Asimov

329. “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.”

— Isaac Asimov

330. “Space, man, have you no respect for science?”

— Isaac Asimov

331. “Of course there are worlds. Millions of them! Every star you see has worlds, and most of those you don’t see.”

— Isaac Asimov

332. “Your phraseology is obscure, but I think I understand.”

— Isaac Asimov

333. “For what could any Entity, conscious of eternal existence, want – but an end?”

— Isaac Asimov

334. “The downtrodden are more religious than the satisfied.”

— Isaac Asimov

335. “What broke loose is popularly and succinctly described as hell.”

— Isaac Asimov

336. “The whole world might know you and acclaim you, but someone in the past, forever unreachable, forever unknowing, spoils it all.”

— Isaac Asimov

337. “When I feel difficulty coming on, I switch to another book I’m writing. When I get back to the problem, my unconscious has solved it.”

— Isaac Asimov

338. “It’s just that old people always think young people haven’t really learned about love; and young people think that old people have forgotten about love; and, you know, they’re both wrong.”

— Isaac Asimov

339. “The history of science is full of revolutionary advances that required small insights that anyone might have had, but that, in fact, only one person did.”

— Isaac Asimov

340. “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.”

— Isaac Asimov

341. “Science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”

— Isaac Asimov

342. “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.”

— Isaac Asimov

343. “It was obvious that bigotry was never a one-way operation, that hatred bred hatred!”

— Isaac Asimov

344. “All the hundreds of millions of people who, in their time, believed the Earth was flat never succeeded in unrounding it by an inch.”

— Isaac Asimov

345. “An incompetent traitor is no danger. It is rather the capable men who must be watched.”

— Isaac Asimov

346. “But what could I want with riches? The true wealth is the love of one’s people.”

— Isaac Asimov

347. “One way of saving on energy use would be to do away with unnecessary transportation. For instance, people commute between work and home, or travel long distances to engage in business conferences. With the development of improved communications and increasing automation, it will become possible in the not-too-distant future, for people to control and maintain business operations and machinery at a distance.”

— Isaac Asimov

348. “You’ll have such proof as exists. You are the only one responsible for your own wants.”

— Isaac Asimov

349. “The age of the pulp magazine was the last in which youngsters, to get their primitive material, were forced to be literate.”

— Isaac Asimov

350. “In fact, it was part of the Tyrannian military tradition that a little discomfort on the part of the soldier was good for discipline.”

— Isaac Asimov