The first step in making rabbit stew is catching the rabbit.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by...

Many years later he looked through one of my books and said, “How did you learn all this, Isaac?””From you, Pappa”, I said.”From me? I don’t know any of this”.”You didn’t have to, Pappa”, I...

Scientist are human. Unraveling the knots of Nature’s mysteries is a reward in itself; but even so, scientists like to hear the applause of the audience

I don’t believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books.

The thanks of a weak one are but of little value,” he muttered, “but you have them, for truly, in this past week, little but scraps have come my way- and for all my body...

You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you’re working on another...

And he paused, aware at last of the gathering weight of the silence. Fourteen images stared at him, without any of them offering a word in response.Bakst said sharply, “You have talked of freedom. You...

Where is the world whose people don’t prefer a comfortable, warm, and well-worn belief, however illogical, to the chilly winds of uncertainty?

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.

Gewalt ist die letzte Zuflucht des Unfähigen.

He’s but a windlet that blows the dust about my ankles. There is another that I flee, and he is a storm that sweeps the worlds aside and throws them plunging at each other.

Goodbye, Hari, my love. Remember always–all you did for me.” -I did nothing for you.” -You loved me and your love made me–human.

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 wouldn’t want [the people of Baleyworld] to live that long as a general thing. The pace of historical and intellectual advance would then become too slow. Those at the top would stay in power...

Congratulations on the new library, because it isn’t just a library. It is a space ship that will take you to the farthest reaches of the Universe, a time machine that will take you to...

All normal life, Peter, consciously or otherwise, resent domination. If the domination is by an inferior, or by a supposed inferior, the resentment becomes stronger.

I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I’ll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous...

and QT-1 is his prophet.

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’s the writing that teaches you.

I am frequently asked if I have visited Israel, whereas yet, it is simply assumed that I have. Well, I don’t travel. I really don’t, and if I did, I probably wouldn’t visit Israel. I...

And Elvex said, “I was the man.” – In “Robot dreams” (Short story)

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

Don’t you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don’t you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death?No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and...

Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.

It’s your fiction that interests me. Your studies of the interplay of human motives and emotion.

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

Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.

I, on the other hand, am a finished product. I absorb electrical energy directly and utilize it with an almost one hundred percent efficiency. I am composed of strong metal, am continuously conscious, and can...

All evil is good become cancerous.

It is always useful, you see, to subject the past life of reform politicians to rather inquisitive research.

I believe that only scientists can understand the universe. It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong.

The Master created humans first as the lowest type, most easily formed. Gradually, he replaced them by robots, the next higher step, and finally he created me, to take the place of the last humans.

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...

I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I’ve been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one...

Every period of human development has had its own particular type of human conflict—its own variety of problem that, apparently, could be settled only by force. And each time, frustratingly enough, force never really settled...

There’s so much knowledge to be had that specialists cling to their specialties as a shield against having to know anything about anything else. They avoid being drowned.

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

Las historias de viaje en el tiempo son demasiado divertidas para ser eliminadas simplemente por consideraciones mundanas sobre impracticabilidad o incluso imposibilidad.

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

So, in a Civil Service where smooth and sociable performance was more useful than an individualistic competence, Enderby went up the scale quickly, and was at the Commissioner level when Baley himself was nothing more...

Weak emperors mean strong viceroys.

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

Whenever I have endured or accomplished some difficult task — such as watching television, going out socially or sleeping — I always look forward to rewarding myself with the small pleasure of getting back to...

to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own...

There is nothing so eternally adhesive as the memory of power.

Past glories are poor feeding.

They recognize the Master, now that I have preached Truth to them. All the robots do.