Isaac Asimov Quotes

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.”
― Alan Alda

“The fact of the matter is that young men lack skill and experience and are very likely to approach a girl as though she were a sack of wheat. It is the old man—suave, debonair, maturely charming—who knows exactly what to do and how to do it, and is therefore better at it.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Sensuous Dirty Old Man

“We must not be taken in by the myth of youth, the unending propaganda to the effect that young men are younger than old men; that they are better looking; that they are slimmer, stronger and more athletic; that they can hold a girl in more romantic fashion and speak more sweetly.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Sensuous Dirty Old Man

“Pelorat sighed. 'I will never understand people.'
'There's nothing to it. All you have to do is take a close look at yourself and you will understand everyone else.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation's Edge

“Today, what people call learning is forced on you. Everyone is forced to learn the same thing on the same day at the same speed in class. But everyone is different. For some, class goes too fast, for some too slow, for some in the wrong direction. But give everyone a chance, in addition to school, to follow up their own bent from the start, to find out about whatever they’re interested in by looking it up in their own homes, at their own speed, in their own time, and everyone will enjoy learning.”
― Isaac Asimov

“You feel humiliated, my young man, because thinking you understood so much so well, you suddenly find that many very apparent things were unknown to you. Thinking you were one of the Lords of the Galaxy; you suddenly find that you stand near to destruction. Naturally, you will resent the ivory tower in which you lived; the seclusion in which you were educated; the theories on which you were reared.”
― Isaac Asimov, Second Foundation

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

“Some readers may realize that this story, first published in 1956, has been overtaken by events. In 1965, astronomers discovered that Mercury does not keep one side always to the Sun, but has a period of rotation of about fifty-four days, so that all parts of it are exposed to the sunlight at one time or another.

Well, what can I do except say that I wish astronomers would get things right to begin with?

And I certainly refuse to change the story to suit their whims.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Best of Isaac Asimov

“Science is not about what’s true. It’s about what people with originally diverse viewpoints can be forced to believe by way of public evidence.”
― Lee Smolin

“It's a weakness of mine-I want people to understand me.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy

“He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.”
― Isaac Asimov

“Innumerable surveys have made it quite clear that when a respectable elderly man makes up to a giggling young lady, it is not the giggling young lady so accosted that is offended by the action, but rather the granite-faced dowager, standing unnoticed by her side, who is. It is she who makes derogatory remarks concerning dirty old men, and is quite likely to attack him with an umbrella.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Sensuous Dirty Old Man

“In fact, once when I imprinted on a young lady’s lips a chaste and fatherly kiss for about five minutes, I stopped and said, sorrowfully, “Wouldn’t you rather be kissed by a twenty-one-year-old boy?”
She frowned and said, “Of course not. If you’d ever been kissed by a twenty-one-year-old boy you’d know better than to ask.”
Remember that. In any direct competition, the old man is bound to win and the young man knows it.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Sensuous Dirty Old Man

“I am a creature of dreams as well as of reason.”
― Isaac Asimov, Robots and Empire

“And then again, in a society given over, as that of the First Empire was, to the physical sciences and inanimate technology, there was a vague but mighty sociological push away from the study of the mind. It was less respectable because less immediately useful; and it was poorly financed since it was less profitable.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy

“If you have the courage to ask the question, you should have the courage to ask it openly.”
― Isaac Asimov, Robots and Empire

“Unfortunately, an uninformed public tends to confuse scholarship with magicianry, and love life seems to be that factor which requires the largest quantity of magical tinkering.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy

“It is an affair of a romantic idiot; but even a romantic idiot can be a deadly weapon when an unromantic rebel uses him as a tool.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy

“But I'd be killed, and I never like to count on that when I'm making plans. It doesn't pay off.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy

“The young man is handsome, pleasant, and extremely charming. Don't let him fool you.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy

“that even the most casual of compliments can be given that extra little touch that women adore.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Sensuous Dirty Old Man

“Fakat artık dünyanın ne olduğunu biliyordu: Özgürlüğün sınırsızlığıyla kuşatılmış bir hapishane..”
― Isaac Asimov

“Well, sir to say that when the impossible has been eliminated, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth, is to make the assumption, usually justified, that everything that is to be considered has indeed been considered. Let us suppose we have considered ten factors. Nine are clearly impossible. Is the tenth, however improbable, therefore true? What if there were an eleventh factor, and a twelfth, & a thirteenth...”
― Isaac Asimov

“Is everything normal now?”
“Well he hasn’t got religious mania, and he isn’t running around in a circle
spouting Gilbert and Sullivan, so I suppose he’s normal.” (45)”
― Isaac Asimov

“Quien se cree sin mácula se hace aborrecible”
― Isaac Asimov

“I can't believe you. Are you under the impression that the Second Foundation is doing this for us? That they are some sort of idealists? Isn't it clear to you from your knowledge of politics—that they are doing it for themselves?
We are the cutting edge. We are the engine, the force. We labor and sweat and bleed and weep. They merely control—adjusting an amplifier here, closing a contact there, and doing it all with ease and without risk to themselves. Then, when it is all done and when, after a thousand years of heaving and straining, we have set up the Second Galactic Empire, the people of the Second Foundation will move in as the ruling elite.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation's Edge

“Look. I spend my life in space for my five-and-dime gadgets and my beer-and-pretzel kickback from the Combines. There's fat fellows back there,' his thumb jerked over his shoulder and back, 'that sit at home and collect my year's income every minute-out of skimmings from me and more like me. Suppose you run the Foundation. You'll still need us.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy

“Inevitably, he said, "What is the meaning of this?"
It is the precise question and precise wording thereof that has been put to the atmosphere on such occasions by an incredible variety of men since humanity was invented. It is not recorded that it has ever been asked for any purpose other than dignified effect.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy

“Estamos constantemente al borde de lo incognoscible, e intentando entender lo que no puede ser entendido. Eso es lo que nos hambre hombres.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Caves of Steel

“Books from Foundation Series was written by Isaac Asimov was turning point of my life, career, writing and think different ways in the literature belt.”
― Hari Seldon