Isaac Asimov

• "A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm."
  • Source: Runaround (1942)
  • Notes: This quote is known as "The First Law of Robotics"
• "A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law."
  • Source: Runaround (1942)
  • Notes: This quote is known as "The Second Law of Robotics"
• "A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law."
  • Source: Runaround (1942)
  • Notes: This quote is known as "The Third Law of Robotics"

• "A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm."
  • Source: (1985)
  • Notes: This quote is known as "The Zeroth Law of Robotics"

Religion

• "To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today."
• "I prefer rationalism to atheism. The question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism, thus you don't have to waste your time in either attacking or defending."
• "I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse."
• "Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night."

• "Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."

Knowledge and science

• "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."
• "True literacy is becoming an arcane art and the United States is steadily dumbing down."
• "If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them."
• "To introduce something altogether new would mean to begin all over, to become ignorant again, and to run the old, old risk of failing to learn."
• "Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do."
• "The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."
• "There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere."
• "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"
• "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."
• "Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is."
• "A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value. "

Writing

• "Until I became a published writer, I remained completely ignorant of books on how to write and courses on the subject...they would have spoiled my natural style; made me observe caution; would have hedged me with rules."
• "Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers."
• "If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster."
• "I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die."
• "From my close observation of writers...they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review."

• "What I will be remembered for are the Foundation Trilogy and the Three Laws of Robotics. What I want to be remembered for is no one book, or no dozen books. Any single thing I have written can be paralleled or even surpassed by something someone else has done. However, my total corpus for quantity, quality and variety can be duplicated by no one else. That is what I want to be remembered for", 20 September 1973, "Yours, Isaac Asimov", page 329.
• "In 1936, I first wrote science fiction. It was a long-winded attempt at writing an endless novel...which died. I remember one sentence, "Whole forests stood sere and brown in midsummer.". That was the first Asimovian science-fiction sentence.
• "Early in my school career, I turned out to be an incorrigible disciplinary problem. I could understand what the teacher was saying as fast as she could say it, I found time hanging heavy, so I would occasionally talk to my neighbor. That was my great crime, I talked."
• "If I could trace my origins to Judas Maccabaeus or King David, that would not add one inch to my stature. It may well be that many East European Jews are descended from Khazars, I may be one of them. Who knows? And who cares?"
• "Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put on an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up. Well, maybe once."
• "I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander."

Computers

• "Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest."
• "I do not fear computers. I fear lack of them."
• "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."

Future

• "Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not."
• "It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be."
• "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."

Other quotes

• "No one can possibly have lived through the Great Depression without being scarred by it. No amount of experience since the depression can convince someone who has lived through it that the world is safe economically."
• "Night was a wonderful time in Brooklyn in the 1930s. Air conditioning was unknown except in movie houses, and so was television. There was nothing to keep one in the house. Furthermore, few people owned automobiles, so there was nothing to carry one away. That left the streets and the stoops. The very fullness served as an inhibition to crime."
• "Violence is the last resort of the incompetent."
• "How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics!"
  • the number of letters in each word of the phrase is a decimal of pi
• "It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety."
• "To insult someone we call him "bestial." For deliberate cruelty and nature, "human" might be the greater insult."
• "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what's right. "
• "Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all time low over the world."
• "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."
• "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. "
• "And above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning"