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asimov
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The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
Isaac Asimov
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Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
Isaac Asimov, Foundation
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If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.
Isaac Asimov
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Any planet is 'Earth' to those that live on it.
Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky
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The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but 'That's funny...
Isaac Asimov
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Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.
Isaac Asimov
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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.'
Isaac Asimov
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Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.
Isaac Asimov
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Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Isaac Asimov, Foundation
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Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.
Isaac Asimov
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I write for the same reason I breathe ... because if I didn't, I would die.
Isaac Asimov
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Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Isaac Asimov
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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 the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
Isaac Asimov
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Tell me why the stars do shine,
Tell me why the ivy twines,
Tell me what makes skies so blue,
And I'll tell you why I love you.
Nuclear fusion makes stars to shine,
Tropisms make the ivy twine,
Raleigh scattering make skies so blue,
Testicular hormones are why I love you.
Isaac Asimov
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Emotionally I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.
Isaac Asimov
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While he lives, he must think; while he thinks, he must dream.
Isaac Asimov
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If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.
Isaac Asimov
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It 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, I, Robot
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...We now know the basic rules governing the universe, together with the gravitational interrelationships of its gross components, as shown in the theory of relativity worked out between 1905 and 1916. We also know the basic rules governing the subatomic particles and their interrelationships, since these are very neatly described by the quantum theory worked out between 1900 and 1930. What's more, we have found that the galaxies and clusters of galaxies are the basic units of the physical universe, as discovered between 1920 and 1930.
...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 they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern 'knowledge' is that it is wrong...
My answer to him was, when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.
The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that 'right' and 'wrong' are absolute; that everything that isn't perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong.
However, I don't think that's so. It seems to me that right and wrong are fuzzy concepts, and I will devote this essay to an explanation of why I think so.
When my friend the English literature expert tells me that in every century scientists think they have worked out the universe and are always wrong, what I want to know is how wrong are they? Are they always wrong to the same degree?
Isaac Asimov
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Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
Isaac Asimov
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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.
Isaac Asimov
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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 one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.
Isaac Asimov
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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.
Isaac Asimov
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To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.
Isaac Asimov
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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 ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.
Isaac Asimov
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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 whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it. Now, when I read constantly about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that the door is closing and that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.
Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov: A Memoir
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Intelligence is an accident of evolution, and not necessarily an advantage.
Isaac Asimov
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I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.
Isaac Asimov
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Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.
Isaac Asimov
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They won't listen. Do you know why? Because they have certain fixed notions about the past. Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don't want the truth; they want their traditions.
Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky
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