01c. 1956 ADIsn'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 200 feet, that overpopulation is choking us, that pollution is killing us, that nuclear war may destroy us - and they yawn and settle back for a comfortable nap. But tell them that the Martians are landing, and they scream and run.Isaac Asimov / quote ↗
02c. 1956 ADImagine that. Terrible, terrible, the way we have all bent to the yoke; the affection we have for the harness about us.Isaac Asimov / quote ↗
03c. 1956 ADIt is a mistake,” he said, “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 individual comfort.Isaac Asimov / quote ↗
04c. 1956 ADThe 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 human beings to withstand the temptation to handle knobs, keys, handles and pushbuttons.Isaac Asimov / quote ↗
05c. 1956 ADScientist 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 audienceIsaac Asimov / quote ↗
06c. 1956 ADIf 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 think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.Isaac Asimov / quote ↗
07c. 1956 ADA 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 knew where I was-green fields, fleecy clouds, perfumed air, and the distant, ravishing sound of the heavenly choir. And there was the recording angel smiling broadly at me in greeting. I said, in wonder, "Is this Heaven?" The recording angel said, "It is." I said (and on waking and remembering, I was proud of my integrity), "But there must be a mistake. I don't belong here. I'm an atheist." "No mistake," said the recording angel. "But as an atheist how can I qualify?" The recording angel said sternly, "We decide who qualifies. Not you." "I see," I said. I looked about, pondered for a moment, then turned to the recording angel and asked, "Is there a typewriter here that I can use?" The significance of the dream was clear to me. I felt Heaven to be the act of writing, and I have been in Heaven for over half a century and I have always known this.Isaac Asimov / quote ↗
08c. 1956 ADPeople who don't expect justice don't have to suffer disappointment.Isaac Asimov / quote ↗
09c. 1956 ADFor a wise man, I have been told, once said, ‘Gratitude is best and most effective when it does not evaporate in empty phrases.’ But alas, my lady, I am but a mass of empty phrases, it would seem.Isaac Asimov / quote ↗
10c. 1956 ADIt is the obvious which is so difficult to see most of the time. People say 'It's as plain as the nose on your face.' But how much of the nose on your face can you see, unless someone holds a mirror up to you?Isaac Asimov / quote ↗
12c. 1956 ADNo one is so modest as not to believe himself a competent amateur sleuth...Isaac Asimov / quote ↗
13c. 1956 ADIt is the writer who might catch the imagination of young people, and plant a seed that will flower and come to fruition.Isaac Asimov / quote ↗
14c. 1956 ADHumanists 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 human interests.Isaac Asimov / quote ↗
15c. 1956 ADFor what could any Entity, conscious of eternal existence, want – but an end?Isaac Asimov / quote ↗
17c. 1956 ADOne might accept death reasoningly, with every aspect of the conscious mind, but the body was a brute beast that knew nothing of reason.Isaac Asimov / quote ↗
18c. 1956 ADAny technological advance can be dangerous. Fire was dangerous from the start, and so (even more so) was speech - and both are still dangerous to this day - but human beings would not be human without them.Isaac Asimov / quote ↗
19c. 1956 ADIt was obvious that bigotry was never a one-way operation, that hatred bred hatred!Isaac Asimov / quote ↗
20c. 1956 ADAll right, Schwartz, tackle my mind now. Go as deep as you want. I was born on Baronn in the Sirius Sector. I lived my life in an atmosphere of anti-Terrestrialism in the formative years, so I can't help what flaws and follies lie at the roots of my subconscious. But look on the surface and tell me if, in my adult years, I have not fought bigotry in myself. Not in others; that would be easy. But in myself, and as hard as I could.Isaac Asimov / quote ↗
21c. 1956 ADAfter a long time, I decided that the Three Laws govern the manner in which my positronic pathways behave. At all times, under all stimuli the Laws constrain the direction and intensity of positronic flow along those pathways so that I always know what to do. Yet the level of knowledge of what to do is not always the same. There are times when my doing-as-I-must is under less constraint than at other times. I have always noticed that the lower the positronomotive potential, then the further removed from certainty is my decision as to which action to take. And the further removed from certainty I am, the nearer I am to ill being. To decide an action in a millisecond rather than a nanosecond produces a sensation I would not wish to be prolonged. What then, I thought to myself, madam, if I were utterly without Laws, as humans are? What if I could make no clear decision on what response to make to some given set of conditions? It would be unbearable and I do not willingly think of it.Isaac Asimov / quote ↗
22c. 1956 ADI 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 their own President. In a world of equals, what real service does a ruler provide?Isaac Asimov / quote ↗
23c. 1956 ADThere was no doubt about it: the City was the culmination of man’s mastery over the environment. Not space travel, not the fifty colonized worlds that were now so haughtily independent, but the City.Isaac Asimov / quote ↗
24c. 1956 ADI 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 too long. Baleyworld would sink into conversation and decay - as your world has done.Isaac Asimov / quote ↗
