Every vice of the Empire has been repeated in the Foundation. Inertia! Our ruling class knows one law; nochange. Despotism! They know one rule; force. Maldistribution! They know one desire; to hold what istheirs.

It is the writer who might catch the imagination of young people, and plant a seed that will flower and come to fruition.

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

The Solarians have given up something mankind has had for a million years; something worth more than atomic power, cities, agriculture, tools, fire, everything; because it’s something that made everything possible (…) The tribe, sir....

A couple of months ago I had a dream, which I remember with the utmost clarity. (I don’t usually remember my dreams.) I dreamed I had died and gone to Heaven. I looked about and...

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

To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.

Of course there are worlds. Millions of them! Every star you see has worlds, and most of those you don’t see.

Once, when a religionist denounced me in unmeasured terms, I sent him a card saying, “I am sure you believe that I will go to hell when I die, and that once there I will...

Despite all that education and experience can do, I retain a certain level of unsophistication that I cannot eradicate and that my friends find amusing. In fact, I think I sometimes detect conspiratorial plottings among...

Fortran”. [M]ankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that...

Isn’t it sad that you can tell people that the ozone layer is being depleted, the forests are being cut down, the deserts are advancing steadily, that the greenhouse effect will raise the sea level...

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.

My feeling is, quite simply, that if there is a God, He has done such a bad jobthat he isn’t worth discussing.

Any book worth banning is a book worth reading.

Mr Baley”, said Quemot, “you can’t treat human emotions as though they were built about a positronic brain”.”I’m not saying you can. Robotics is a deductive science and sociology an inductive one. But mathematics can...

People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.

Feminine intuition? Is that what you wanted the robot for? You men. Faced with a woman reaching a correct conclusion and unable to accept the fact that she is your equal or superior in intelligence,...

I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child...

I have the shape of a human being and organs equivalent to those of a human being. My organs, in fact, are identical to some of those in a prosthetized human being. I have contributed...

The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century...

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

A circle has no end.

What lasts in the reader’s mind is not the phrase but the effect the phrase created: laughter, tears, pain, joy. If the phrase is not affecting the reader, what’s it doing there? Make it do...

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

But they kept me away from you earlier-and, on my word, you may laugh, but I was lonely for missing friendship.

Flattery is useful when dealing with youngsters.

Un nou-născut crede că el reprezintă întregul univers, dar greșește – așa cum își dă seama destul de repede. De aceea, el trebuie să studieze lumea exterioară lui – trebuie să încerce să învețe unde...

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.

I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.

Somewhere on the world was the Emperor’s palace, set amid one hundred square miles of natural soil, rainbowed with flowers.

In the empty expanses of space, the wandering traders need men like myself to care for the spiritual side of a life so given over to commerce, and worldly pursuits.

The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing.

Mathematicians deal with large numbers sometimes, but never in their income.

In a properly automated and educated world, then, machines may prove to be the true humanizing influence. It may be that machines will do the work that makes life possible and that human beings will...

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.

There’s probably no one so easily bribed, but he lacks even the fundamental honesty of honorable corruption. He doesn’t stay bribed; not for any sum.

Creationists make it sound as though a ‘theory’ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.

Humanists recognize that it is only when people feel free to think for themselves, using reason as their guide, that they are best capable of developing values that succeed in satisfying human needs and serving...

Aimless extension of knowledge, however, which is what I think you really mean by the term curiosity, is merely inefficiency. I am designed to avoid inefficiency.

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.

I am afraid a monster is grown that will devour all of us. Yet we must fight him.

A person willing to fly in the face of reason, authority, and common sense must be a person of considerable self-assurance. Since he occurs only rarely, he must seem eccentric (in at least that respect)...

The day of the week on which the tour took place was known to all workers. All devices in its path ought to have been carefully neutralized or locked, since it was unreasonable to expect...

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.

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…’