Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these...

It has been said in this courtroom that only a human being can be free. It seems to me that only someone who wishes for freedom can be free. I wish for freedom.

She’s qualified all right. She understands robots like a sister—comes from hating human beings so much, I think.

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny…’

I think you are wrong, partner Elijah. My briefing on human characteristics here among the people of Earth includes the information that, unlike the men of the Outer Worlds, they are trained from birth to...

Ralph Nimmo carecía de título universitario y se enorgullecía de ello. -Un título […] es el primer paso de un recorrido calamitoso. Como no quieres desperdiciarlo, pasas al trabajo de graduado y a la investigación...

Stoop, then, or you will be beaten to your knees. Stoop voluntarily, and you may save a remnant. You have depended on metal and power and they have sustained you as far as they could....

The human mind works at low efficiency. Twenty percent is the figure usually given. When, momentarily, there is a flash of greater power, it is termed a hunch, or insight, or intuition.

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.

I would argue that a truly developed country would be beyond Presidents and Kings. In a world with some semblance of equality, each liberal-minded woman, each gay person, and indeed almost every person could be...

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.