In 1936, I first wrote science fiction. It was a long-winded attempt at writing an endless novel…which died. I remember one sentence, “Whole forests stood sere and brown in midsummer”.

Though science can cause problems, it is not by ignorance that we will solve them.

A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. [The Zeroth Law of Robotics]

Early in my school career, I turned out to be an incorrigible disciplinary problem. I could understand what the teacher was saying as fast as she could say it, I found time hanging heavy, so...

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. [The Third Law of Robotics]

If I am right, then [religious fundamentalists] will not go to Heaven, because there is no Heaven. If THEY are right, then they will not go to Heaven, because they are hypocrites.

Until I became a published writer, I remained completely ignorant of books on how to write and courses on the subject… they would have spoiled my natural style; made me observe caution; would have hedged...

I prefer rationalism to atheism. The question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism, thus you don’t have to waste your time in either attacking or defending.

True literacy is becoming an arcane art and the United States is steadily dumbing down.

When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion – the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after...

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.

The trouble is that racial stereotypes, unfavourable to everyone but white men of northwest European extraction, were completely accepted, and indeed, scarcely noted in those days of only forty years ago [the 1930s] (except perhaps...

The vast majority, who believe in astrology and think that the planets have nothing better to do than form a code that will tell them whether tomorrow is a good day to close a business...

Scientific apparatus offers a window to knowledge, but as they grow more elaborate, scientists spend ever more time washing the windows.

[Its nearest rival, I discovered, is The Last Question by science fiction maestro Isaac Asimov. This is the one about what happens when all the stars burn out. Is entropy reversible?] It is a curious...

I have been told that a young would-be composer wrote to Mozart asking advice as to how to compose a symphony. Mozart responded that a symphony was a complex and demanding form and that it...

If I could trace my origins to Judas Maccabaeus or King David, that would not add one inch to my stature. It may well be that many East European Jews are descended from Khazars, I...

To introduce something altogether new would mean to begin all over, to become ignorant again, and to run the old, old risk of failing to learn.

I am the beneficiary of a lucky break in the genetic sweepstakes.

Night was a wonderful time in Brooklyn in the 1930s. Air conditioning was unknown except in movie houses, and so was television. There was nothing to keep one in the house. Furthermore, few people owned...

It’s not so much what you have to learn if you accept weird theories, it’s what you have to unlearn

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

University President: Why is it that you physicists always require so much expensive equipment? Now the Department of Mathematics requires nothing but money for paper, pencils, and erasers…and the Department of Philosophy is better still....

How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics!

When asked what he would do if he only had six months to live: Type faster.

It seems to me that God is a convenient invention of the human mind

A poor idea well written is more likely to be accepted than a good idea poorly written

Then Priss arrived, dragging a volume of colorlessness in with him, a drabness that was unaffected by the noise and the absolute splendor (no other word would describe it – or else it was the...

Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put on an orgy in my office and I wouldn’t look up. Well, maybe once.

A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. [The Second Law of Robotics]

If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I...

No one can possibly have lived through the Great Depression without being scarred by it. No amount of experience since the depression can convince someone who has lived through it that the world is safe...

If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live, I’d type a little faster.

There is an art to science, and a science in art; the two are not enemies, but different aspects of the whole.

What I will be remembered for are the Foundation Trilogy and the Three Laws of Robotics. What I want to be remembered for is no one book, or no dozen books. Any single thing I...

It is a curious fact that innumerable readers have asked me if I wrote this story. They seem never to remember the title of the story or (for sure) the author, except for the vague...

I sit here and think, with more than a little astonishment, that I have been writing and publishing Science Fiction now for just three-eighths of a century. This isn’t bad for someone who only admits...

Well, I can type all day without getting tired. [In response to a question as to which he preferred, women or writing]

A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. [The First Law of Robotics]

That we have come as far as we have in forty years [the 1930s to the 1970s] is hopeful, though I believe it is more through the fact that Hitler’s excesses made racism poisonous to...