Isaac Asimov's Quotes

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.

Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.

It takes more than capital to swing business. You've got to have the A. I. D. degree to get by - Advertising, Initiative, and Dynamics.

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.

To insult someone we call him 'bestial. For deliberate cruelty and nature, 'human' might be the greater insult.

There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.

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.

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know - and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.

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.

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.

Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.

For it is in giving that we receive.

I have been all things unholy. If God can work through me, he can work through anyone.

If God can work through me, he can work through anyone.

If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.

While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Lord, grant that I might not so much seek to be loved as to love.

It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.

Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance.

Above all the grace and the gifts that Christ gives to his beloved is that of overcoming self.

No one is to be called an enemy, all are your benefactors, and no one does you harm. You have no enemy except yourselves.

It is not fitting, when one is in God's service, to have a gloomy face or a chilling look.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.

Where there is injury let me sow pardon.

If a superior give any order to one who is under him which is against that man's conscience, although he do not obey it yet he shall not be dismissed.

Grant me the treasure of sublime poverty: permit the distinctive sign of our order to be that it does not possess anything of its own beneath the sun, for the glory of your name, and that it have no other patrimony than begging.

What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.

He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent.

In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?

Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature.

Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.

Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.

The greatest evil is physical pain.

Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.

This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfections.

God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.

There is something in humility which strangely exalts the heart.

By faithfulness we are collected and wound up into unity within ourselves, whereas we had been scattered abroad in multiplicity.

A thing is not necessarily true because badly uttered, nor false because spoken magnificently.

Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked.

He that is kind is free, though he is a slave; he that is evil is a slave, though he be a king.

The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.

We cannot pass our guardian angel's bounds, resigned or sullen, he will hear our sighs.

Don't you believe that there is in man a deep so profound as to be hidden even to him in whom it is?

Will is to grace as the horse is to the rider.

Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible.

Oh Lord, give me chastity, but do not give it yet.

The purpose of all wars, is peace.

Passion is the evil in adultery. If a man has no opportunity of living with another man's wife, but if it is obvious for some reason that he would like to do so, and would do so if he could, he is no less guilty than if he was caught in the act.

It is not the punishment but the cause that makes the martyr.

Punishment is justice for the unjust.

Hear the other side.

If we live good lives, the times are also good. As we are, such are the times.

The words printed here are concepts. You must go through the experiences.

Love, and do what you like.

Grant what thou commandest and then command what thou wilt.

To seek the highest good is to live well.

Thou must be emptied of that wherewith thou art full, that thou mayest be filled with that whereof thou art empty.

I want my friend to miss me as long as I miss him.

We are certainly in a common class with the beasts; every action of animal life is concerned with seeking bodily pleasure and avoiding pain.

No eulogy is due to him who simply does his duty and nothing more.

I found thee not, O Lord, without, because I erred in seeking thee without that wert within.

If we did not have rational souls, we would not be able to believe.

There is no possible source of evil except good.

To abstain from sin when one can no longer sin is to be forsaken by sin, not to forsake it.

To many, total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.

We make ourselves a ladder out of our vices if we trample the vices themselves underfoot.

The desire is thy prayers; and if thy desire is without ceasing, thy prayer will also be without ceasing. The continuance of your longing is the continuance of your prayer.

My mind withdrew its thoughts from experience, extracting itself from the contradictory throng of sensuous images, that it might find out what that light was wherein it was bathed... And thus, with the flash of one hurried glance, it attained to the vision of That Which Is.