Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimovwas an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. He was known for his works of science fiction and popular science. Asimov was prolific and wrote or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. His books have been published in 9 of the 10 major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth2 January 1920
CityPetrovichi, Russia
CountryUnited States of America
fiction lifetime expect-nothing
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.
stupid silly light
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.
writing essence fiction-stories
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.
grateful thinking humanity
Surely, if we take on thinking partners - or, at the least, thinking servants - in the form of machines, we will be more comfortable with them, and will relate to them more easily, if they are shaped like humans. It will be easier to be friends with human-shaped robots than with specialized machines of unrecognizable shape. And I sometimes think that, in the desperate straits of humanity today, we would be grateful to have nonhuman friends, even if they are only the friends we build ourselves.
encouragement truth mistake
A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.
eye men rocks
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.
art two people
How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection...That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.
inspiration technology men
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.
cheer pregnancy technology
All sorts of computer errors are now turning up. You'd be surprised to know the number of doctors who claim they are treating pregnant men.
honesty technology computer
Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.
writing exercise typewriters
When I sit down at the typewriter, I write. Someone once asked me if I had a fixed routine before I start, like setting up exercises, sharpening pencils, or having a drink of orange juice. I said, "No, the only thing I do before I start writing is to make sure that I'm close enough to the typewriter to reach the keys."
inanimate-objects natural assorted
We are all victimized by the natural perversity of inanimate objects...and the assorted human beings who perpetuate and maintain this perversity.
agreement fiction firsts
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.
new-york giving diversity
I am all for cultural diversity and would be willing to see each recognizable group value its cultural heritage. I am a New York patriot, for instance, and if I lived in Los Angeles, I would love to get together with other New York expatriates and sing "Give My Regards to Broadway".