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.

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

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.

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.

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...

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...

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.

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.

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