Isaac Asimov Quotes - Page 8

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

  Isaac Asimov

  Life, Nursing, Moved On

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• 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.

  Isaac Asimov

  Work, Writing, Persistence

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• 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.

  Isaac Asimov

  Fear, Thinking, Ideas

  Isaac Asimov (1992). “Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine”

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• I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say that one is an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or agnostic. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect that he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.

  Isaac Asimov

  Atheist, Science, Years

  Free Inquiry Journal, Spring 1982.

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• Only a lie that wasn't ashamed of itself could possibly succeed.

  Isaac Asimov

  Lying, Succeed, Ashamed

  Isaac Asimov (2004). “Second Foundation”, p.96, Spectra

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• 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.

  Isaac Asimov

  Moving, Long, Inspire

  "Notes for a Memoir: On Isaac Asimov, Life, and Writing". Book by Janet Asimov, p. 58, 2006.

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• 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.

  Isaac Asimov

  Eye, Men, Rocks

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• The law of conservation of energy tells us we can't get something for nothing, but we refuse to believe it.

  Isaac Asimov

  Believe, Science, Law

  "Isaac Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations". 1988.

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• 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.

  Isaac Asimov

  Money, Philosophy, President

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• 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.

  Isaac Asimov

  Sea, Rivers, Advice

  Isaac Asimov (2009). “I, Asimov: A Memoir”, p.83, Bantam

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• Democracy cannot survive overpopulation.

  Isaac Asimov

  Democracy, Politics, Overpopulation

  Isaac Asimov, Carl Howard Freedman (2005). “Conversations with Isaac Asimov”, p.137, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• All evil is good become cancerous.

  Isaac Asimov

  Evil

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• 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

  Isaac Asimov

  Book, Thinking, Ideas

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• Considering what human beings do and have done to human beings (and to other living things as well) ... I can never imagine what the devil people think computers can add to the horrors.

  Isaac Asimov

  Thinking, People, Devil

  Isaac Asimov (1977). “The beginning and the end”, Pocket

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• The world in general disapproves of creativity, and to be creative in public is particularly bad. Even to speculate in public is rather worrisome.

  Isaac Asimov

  Creativity, Creative, World

  "Isaac Asimov Asks, 'How Do People Get New Ideas?'". Essay by Isaac Asimov on creativity, www.technologyreview.com. 1959.

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• There is nothing frightening about an eternal dreamless sleep. Surely it is better than eternal torment in Hell and eternal boredom in Heaven.

  Isaac Asimov

  Death, Sleep, Boredom

  Isaac Asimov (2009). “I, Asimov: A Memoir”, p.480, Bantam

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• 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.

  Isaac Asimov

  Technology, Hands, Independence

  "Past, Present, and Future".

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• I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it.

  Isaac Asimov

  Atheist, Long, Atheism

  Free Inquiry Journal, Spring 1982.

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• Old men tend to forget what thought was like in their youth; they forget the quickness of the mental jump, the daring of the youthful intuition, the agility of the fresh insight. They become accustomed to the more plodding varieties of reason, and because this is more than made up by the accumulation of experience, old men think themselves wiser than the young.

  Isaac Asimov

  Men, Thinking, Intuition

  Isaac Asimov (2010). “Pebble in the Sky”, p.108, Macmillan

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• Night will always be a time of fear and insecurity, and the heart will sink with the sun.

  Isaac Asimov

  Heart, Night, Insecurity

  Isaac Asimov (2008). “The Stars, Like Dust”, p.96, Macmillan

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• 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

  War, Expression, Bangs

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• To test a perfect theory with imperfect instruments did not impress the Greek philosophers as a valid way to gain knowledge.

  Isaac Asimov

  Knowledge, Science, Perfect

  Isaac Asimov (1968). “The Intelligent Man's Guide to the Physical Sciences”

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• 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.

  Isaac Asimov

  Computer, Problem, Reaching

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

  Isaac Asimov

  Believe, Ignorance, Danger

  Isaac Asimov (2011). “The Naked Sun”, p.8, Spectra

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• 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.

  Isaac Asimov

  Fun, Dark, Moon

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