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
There is not a discovery in science, however revolutionary, however sparkling with insight, that does not arise out of what went before.
If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.
Fifty years," I hackneyed, "is a long time." "Not when you're looking back at them," she said. "You wonder how they vanished so quickly.
Suppose we were to teach creationism. What would be the content of the teaching? Merely that a creator formed the universe and all species of life ready-made? Nothing more? No details?
The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing.
My feeling is that as far as creativity is concerned, isolation is required. Creation is embarrassing. For every new good idea you have, there are a hundred, ten thousand foolish ones.
Where any answer is possible, all answers are meaningless.
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.
Was there anything more exciting in life than seeking answers?
Dreams may be impossible, yet still be dreamed.
Custom is second nature. Be accustomed to a bald head, sufficiently accustomed, and hair on it would seem monstrous.
Radiation, unlike smoking, drinking, and overeating, gives no pleasure, so the possible victims object.
To all my gentle readers who have treated me with love for over 30 years, I must say farewell. It has always been my ambition to die in harness with my head face down on a keyboard and my nose caught between two of the keys, but that's not the way it worked out. I have had a long and happy life and I have no complaints about the ending, thereof, and so farewell - farewell.
Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast.