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 (c. 2 January 1920 – 6 April 1992) was a Russian-born American author and biochemist.

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.

Contents

Quotes [edit]

Outside intelligences, exploring the Solar System with true impartiality, would be quite likely to enter the Sun in their records thus: Star X, spectral class G0, 4 planets plus debris.

General sources [edit]

There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.
Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.
No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be ...
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.
There are limits beyond which your folly will not carry you. I am glad of that. In fact, I am relieved.
I feel that the longest and worst punishment should be reserved for those who slandered God by inventing Hell.
  • Outside intelligences, exploring the Solar System with true impartiality, would be quite likely to enter the Sun in their records thus: Star X, spectral class G0, 4 planets plus debris.
    • "By Jove!" in View from a Height (1963); often misquoted as "Jupiter plus debris".
  • 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 have written can be paralleled or even surpassed by something someone else has done. However, my total corpus for quantity, quality and variety can be duplicated by no one else. That is what I want to be remembered for.
    • Yours, Isaac Asimov (20 September 1973)
  • There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.
    • The Stars in Their Courses (1974), p. 36
  • People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. They are far too ready to dismiss it and to build arcane structures of extremely rickety substance in order to avoid it. I, on the other hand, see coincidence everywhere as an inevitable consequence of the laws of probability, according to which having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be.
  • [Creationists] make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
  • Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.
    • "How Easy to See the Future", Natural History magazine (April 1975); later published in Asimov on Science Fiction (1981).
  • Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today — but the core of science fiction, its essence, the concept around which it revolves, has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.
    • "My Own View" in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1978) edited by Robert Holdstock; later published in Asimov on Science Fiction (1981)
  • It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be ... This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.
    • "My Own View" in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1978) edited by Robert Holdstock; later published in Asimov on Science Fiction (1981)
  • But suppose we were to teach creationism. What would be the content of the teaching? Merely that a creator formed the universe and all species of life ready-made? Nothing more? No details?
    • "The Dangerous Myth of Creationism" in Penthouse (January 1982); reprinted as Ch. 2 : "Creationism and the Schools" in The Roving Mind (1983), p. 16
  • I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. 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.
    • Free Inquiry (Spring 1982)
  • Consider the most famous pure dystopian tale of modern times, 1984, by George Orwell (1903-1950), published in 1948 (the same year in which Walden Two was published). I consider it an abominably poor book. It made a big hit (in my opinion) only because it rode the tidal wave of cold war sentiment in the United States.
    • "Nowhere!" Asimov's Science Fiction (September 1983)
  • There are many aspects of the universe that still cannot be explained satisfactorily by science; but ignorance only implies ignorance that may someday be conquered. To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.
  • There are limits beyond which your folly will not carry you. I am glad of that. In fact, I am relieved.
    • Doctor Susan Calvin in "Robot Dreams" in Robot Dreams (1986)
  • All life is nucleic acid; the rest is commentary
    • "The Relativity of Wrong" (1988) - "Beginning with Bone" (May, 1987)
  • [In response to this question by Bill Moyers: What do you see happening to the idea of dignity to human species if this population growth continues at its present rate?] "It's going to destroy it all. I use what I call my bathroom metaphor. If two people live in an apartment, and there are two bathrooms, then both have what I call freedom of the bathroom, go to the bathroom any time you want, and stay as long as you want to for whatever you need. And this to my way is ideal. And everyone believes in the freedom of the bathroom. It should be right there in the Constitution. But if you have 20 people in the apartment and two bathrooms, no matter how much every person believes in freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up, you have to set up times for each person, you have to bang at the door, aren't you through yet, and so on. And in the same way, democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people onto the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies.
  • I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing — to be clear. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or symbolically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that might (if I were good enough) get me a Pulitzer prize. I would write merely clearly and in this way establish a warm relationship between myself and my readers, and the professional critics — Well, they can do whatever they wish.
  • I was once being interviewed by Barbara Walters...In between two of the segments she asked me..."But what would you do if the doctor gave you only six months to live?" I said, "Type faster." This was widely quoted, but the "six months" was changed to "six minutes," which bothered me. It's "six months."
    • Asimov Laughs Again (1992)
  • 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 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.
    I would also want a God who would not allow a Hell. Infinite torture can only be a punishment for infinite evil, and I don't believe that infinite evil can be said to exist even in the case of Hitler. Besides, if most human governments are civilized enough to try to eliminate torture and outlaw cruel and unusual punishments, can we expect anything less of an all-merciful God?
    I feel that if there were an afterlife, punishment for evil would be reasonable and of a fixed term. And I feel that the longest and worst punishment should be reserved for those who slandered God by inventing Hell.
    • I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994)
  • To be sure, the Bible contains the direct words of God. How do we know? The Moral Majority says so. How do they know? They say they know and to doubt it makes you an agent of the Devil or, worse, a Lbr-l Dm-cr-t. And what does the Bible textbook say? Well, among other things it says the earth was created in 4004 BC (Not actually, but a Moral Majority type figured that out three and a half centuries ago, and his word is also accepted as inspired.) The sun was created three days later. The first male was molded out of dirt, and the first female was molded, some time later, out of his rib. As far as the end of the universe is concerned, the Book of Revelation (6:13-14) says: "And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind." … 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.
    • Canadian Atheists Newsletter (1994)
  • Happiness is doing it rotten your own way.
    • I, Asimov (1994)
  • Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
    • As quoted in The Mammoth Book of Zingers, Quips, and One-Liners (2004) edited by Geoff Tibballs, p. 299
  • If you suspect that my interest in the Bible is going to inspire me with sudden enthusiasm for Judaism and make me a convert of mountain‐moving fervor and that I shall suddenly grow long earlocks and learn Hebrew and go about denouncing the heathen — you little know the effect of the Bible on me. Properly read, it is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.
  • I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.
    • As quoted in Philosophy on the Go (2007) by Joey Green, p. 222

The Three Laws of Robotics (1942) [edit]

A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  • A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
    • "Runaround" in Astounding Science Fiction (March 1942); later published in I, Robot (1950). This statement is known as "The First Law of Robotics"
  • A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
    • "Runaround" in Astounding Science Fiction (March 1942); later published in I, Robot (1950). This statement is known as "The Second Law of Robotics"
  • A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
    • "Runaround" in Astounding Science Fiction (March 1942); later published in I, Robot (1950). This statement is known as "The Third Law of Robotics"

Later included among these laws was a more fundamental directive:

  • A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
    • Robots and Empire (1985) This statement is known as "The Zeroth Law of Robotics"; a variant of it first occurred in The Evitable Conflict (1950) as: No robot may harm humanity, or through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

The Foundation series [edit]

Foundation (1951) [edit]

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Four of the stories in this work were originally published with different titles in Astounding Magazine between 1942 and 1944, and the fifth was added when they first appeared in book form in 1951.
An atom-blaster is a good weapon, but it can point both ways.
It's a poor blaster that doesn't point both ways.
  • Q. You do not consider your statement a disloyal one?
    A. No, sir. Scientific truth is beyond loyalty and disloyalty.
    Q. You are sure that your statement represents scientific truth?
    A. I am.
    • Part I, The Psychohistorians, section 6
  • The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity — a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop.
    • Part I, The Psychohistorians, section 6
  • “That insufferable, dull-witted donkey! That—”
    Hardin broke in: “Not at all. He’s merely the product of his environment. He doesn’t understand much except that ‘I got a gun and you ain’t.’ ”
    • Part II, The Encyclopedists, section 2 (originally published as “Foundation” in Astounding (May 1942))
  • “Violence,” came the retort, “is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
    • Part II, The Encyclopedists, section 5 (This also appears three times in "Bridle and Saddle" which is titled "The Mayors" within Foundation. It is derived from the famous phrase by Samuel Johnson: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" and is usually quoted as simply "Violence … is the last refuge of the incompetent.")
  • Well, then, arrest him. You can accuse him of something or other afterward.
    • Part III, The Mayors, section 1 (originally published as “Bridle and Saddle” in Astounding (June 1942))
  • “That was the time to begin all-out preparations for war.”
    “On the contrary. That was the time to begin all-out prevention of war.”
    • Part III, The Mayors, section 1
  • It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.
    • Part III, The Mayors, section 2
  • Courtiers don’t take wagers against the king’s skill. There is the deadly danger of winning.
    • Part III, The Mayors, section 3
  • He believes in that mummery a good deal less than I do, and I don’t believe in it at all.
    • Part III, The Mayors, section 3
  • For it is the chief characteristic of the religion of science, that it works, and that such curses as that of Aporat’s are really deadly.
    • Part III, The Mayors, section 7
  • A fire eater must eat fire even if he has to kindle it himself.
    • Part III, The Mayors, section 9
  • Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
    • Part IV, The Traders, section 1 (originally published as “The Wedge” in Astounding (October 1944))
  • “Ponyets! They sent you?”
    “Pure chance,” said Ponyets, bitterly, “or the work of my own personal malevolent demon.”
    • Part IV, The Traders, section 3
  • There's something about a pious man such as he. He will cheerfully cut your throat if it suits him, but he will hesitate to endanger the welfare of your immaterial and problematical soul.
    • Part IV, The Traders, section 3
  • The whole business is the crudest sort of stratagem, since we have no way of foreseeing it to the end. It is a mere paying out of rope on the chance that somewhere along the length of it will be a noose.
    • Part V, The Merchant Princes, section 2 (originally published as “The Big and the Little” in Astounding (August 1944))
  • He is energetic only in evading responsibility.
    • Part V, The Merchant Princes, section 2
  • To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.
    • Part V, The Merchant Princes, section 3
  • Korell is that frequent phenomenon in history: the republic whose ruler has every attribute of the absolute monarch but the name. It therefore enjoyed the usual despotism unrestrained even by those two moderating influences in the legitimate monarchies: regal “honor” and court etiquette.
    • Part V, The Merchant Princes, section 4
  • Now any dogma, based primarily on faith and emotionalism, is a dangerous weapon to use on others, since it is almost impossible to guarantee that the weapon will never be turned on the user.
    • Part V, The Merchant Princes, section 13
  • An atom blaster is a good weapon, but it can point both ways.
    • Part V, The Merchant Princes, section 13
  • It’s a poor atom blaster that won’t point both ways.
    • Part V, The Merchant Princes, section 18

Foundation and Empire (1952) [edit]

  • He is a dreamer of ancient times, or rather, of the myths of what ancient times used to be. Such men are harmless in themselves, but their queer lack of realism makes them fools for others.
    • Chapter 4 “The Emperor” (in part I, “The General” originally published as “Dead Hand” in Astounding (April 1945))
  • You are a valuable subject, Brodrig. You always suspect far more than is necessary, and I have but to take half your suggested precautions to be utterly safe.
    • Chapter 4 “The Emperor”
  • Inertia! Our ruling class knows one law; no change. Despotism! They know one rule; force. Maldistribution! They know one desire; to hold what is theirs.
    • Chapter 11 “Bride and Groom” (in part II, “The Mule” originally published under the same title in Astounding (November-December 1945))
  • To him, a stilted geometric love of arrangement was “system,” an indefatigable and feverish interest in the pettiest facets of day-to-day bureaucracy was “industry,” indecision when right was “caution,” and blind stubbornness when wrong, “determination.”
    • Chapter 12 “Captain and Mayor”
  • It is the invariable lesson to humanity that distance in time, and in space as well, lends focus. It is not recorded, incidentally, that the lesson has ever been permanently learned.
    • Chapter 13 “Lieutenant and Clown”
  • “Were I to use the wits the good Spirits gave me,” he said, “then I would say this lady can not exist — for what sane man would hold a dream to be reality. Yet rather would I not be sane and lend belief to charmed, enchanted eyes.”
    • Chapter 13 “Lieutenant and Clown”
  • It is well-known that the friend of a conqueror is but the last victim.
    • Chapter 22 “Death on Neotrantor”

Second Foundation (1953) [edit]

  • Secrecy as deep as this is past possibility without nonexistence as well.
    • Chapter 1 “Two Men and the Mule” (in part I, “Search by the Mule” originally published as “Now You See It—” in Astounding (January 1948))
  • Every human being lived behind an impenetrable wall of choking mist within which no other but he existed. Occasionally there were the dim signals from deep within the cavern in which another man was located — so that each might grope toward the other. Yet because they did not know one another, and could not understand one another, and dared not trust one another, and felt from infancy the terrors and insecurity of that ultimate isolation — there was the hunted fear of man for man, the savage rapacity of man toward man.
    • Chapter 8 “Seldon’s Plan” (in part II, “Search by the Foundation” originally published as “—And Now You Don’t” in Astounding (November and December 1949 and January 1950))
  • The most hopelessly stupid man is he who is not aware that he is wise.
    • Chapter 8 “Seldon’s Plan”
  • The house was somehow very lonely at night and Dr. Darell found that the fate of the Galaxy made remarkably little difference while his daughter’s mad little life was in danger.
    • Chapter 11 “Stowaway”
  • Remarkable what a fragile flower romance is. A gun with a nervous operator behind it can spoil the whole thing.
    • Chapter 11 “Stowaway”
  • The spell of power never quite releases its hold.
    • Chapter 12 “Lord”

Foundation’s Edge (1982) [edit]

All page numbers from the mass market edition published by Del Rey (17th printing, March 1989)
  • At odd and unpredictable times, we cling in fright to the past.
    • Chapter 1 “Councilman” section 1 (p. 4)
  • It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.
    • Chapter 6 “Earth” section 1 (p. 100)
  • If there is a misuse of power, it is on her part. My crime is that I have never labored to make myself popular — I admit that much — and I have paid too little attention to fools who are old enough to be senile but young enough to have power.
    • Chapter 8 “Farmwoman” section 5 (p. 154)
  • Pelorat sighed. “I will never understand people.”
    “There’s nothing to it. All you have to do is take a close look at yourself and you will understand everyone else. We’re in no way different ourselves... You show me someone who can’t understand people and I’ll show you someone who has built up a false image of himself.”
    • Chapter 11 “Sayshell” section 3 (p. 205)
  • Once you get it into your head that somebody is controlling events, you can interpret everything in that light and find no reasonable certainty anywhere.
    • Chapter 12 “Agent” section 4 (p. 226)
  • “Is not all this an extraordinary concatenation of coincidence?”
    Pelorat said, “If you list it like that—”
    “List it any way you please,” said Trevize. “I don’t believe in extraordinary concatenations of coincidence.”
    • Chapter 14 “Forward!” section 1 (p. 281)
  • It’s one thing to have guts; it’s another to be crazy.
    • Chapter 15 “Gaia-S” section 2 (p. 302)
  • “Stories grow by accretion. Tales accumulate — like dust. The longer the time lapse, the dustier the history — until it degenerates into fables.”
    Pelorat said, “We historians are familiar with the process, Dom. There is a certain preference for the fable. The falsely dramatic drives out the truly dull.”
    • Chapter 17 “Gaia” section 5 (p. 361)
  • Societies create their own history and tend to wipe out lowly beginnings, either by forgetting them or inventing totally fictitious heroic rescues.
    • Chapter 17 “Gaia” section 5 (p. 363)
  • It was easy to cover up ignorance by the mystical word “intuition.”
    • Chapter 18 “Collision” section 4 (p. 377)
  • It is better to go to defeat with free will than to live in a meaningless security as a cog in a machine.
    • Chapter 19 “Decision” section 7 (p. 404)
  • We abandoned the appearance of power to preserve the essence of it.
    • Chapter 20 “Conclusion” section 1 (p. 408)
  • If you were to insist I was a robot, you might not consider me capable of love in some mystic human sense, but you would not be able to distinguish my reactions from that which you would call love — so what difference would it make?
    • Chapter 20 “Conclusion” section 4 (p. 420)

The Gods Themselves (1972) [edit]

  • To Mankind
    And the hope that the war against folly may someday be won, after all
    • Dedication (p. 5)
  • I’d say his mind stops functioning, but I lack the proof of any other state from which it might stop.
    • Section 1 “Against stupidity...”, Chapter 6 (p. 12)
  • “It 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. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century.”
    • Section 1, Chapter 7 (p. 56; note that the book is set in the year 2100)
  • Tritt listened placidly, clearly understanding nothing, but content to be listening; while Odeen, transmitting nothing, was as clearly content to be lecturing.
    • Section 2 “...the gods themselves...”, Chapter 1b (p. 82)
  • I don’t like anything that’s got to be. I want to know why.
    • Section 2, Chapter 2a (p. 93)
  • I know nothing of that directly; I only know what I have been told by other young ones who couldn’t have known directly either. I want to find out the truth about them and the wanting has grown until there is more of curiosity in me than fear.
    • Section 2, Chapter 2b (p. 104)
  • I fear my ignorance.
    • Section 3 “...contend in vain?”, Chapter 3 (p. 187)
  • The easiest way to solve a problem is to deny it exists.
    • Section 3, Chapter 10 (p. 236)
  • You know that prudery is only the other side of prurience. The words are even on the same page in the dictionary.
    • Section 3, Chapter 12 (p. 244)
  • I’ve lived most of my life already and I suppose I can argue myself into believing that I have no great cause to love humanity. However, only a few people have hurt me, and if I hurt everyone in return that is unconscionable usury.
    • Section 3, Chapter 12 (p. 250)
  • If an interaction is too weak to be detectable or to exert influence in any way, then by any operational definition, it doesn’t exist.
    • Section 3, Chapter 12 (p. 257)
  • There are no happy endings in history, only crisis points that pass.
    • Section 3, Chapter 19 (p. 287)

The Roving Mind (1983) [edit]

I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.
Knowledge is indivisible. When people grow wise in one direction, they are sure to make it easier for themselves to grow wise in other directions as well.
The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.
  • Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death?
    No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.
    One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?"
    "Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be."
    • p. 43
  • Knowledge is indivisible. When people grow wise in one direction, they are sure to make it easier for themselves to grow wise in other directions as well. On the other hand, when they split up knowledge, concentrate on their own field, and scorn and ignore other fields, they grow less wise — even in their own field.
    • Ch. 25
  • How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection. An artist is emotional, they think, and uses only his intuition; he sees all at once and has no need of reason. A scientist is cold, they think, and uses only his reason; he argues carefully step by step, and needs no imagination. That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.
    • Ch. 25

I, Asimov (1994) [edit]

  • 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.
    • Ch. 8, Library

Quotes about Asimov [edit]

  • He had writer's block once. It was the worst ten minutes of his life.
    • Attributed to Harlan Ellison, quoted in Page Fright : Foibles and Fetishes of Famous Writers (2009) by Harry Bruce
    • Variant: Most writers hate to write, and will grasp any excuse to do something else … There are exceptions. Isaac Asimov actually was never happier than sitting at a keyboard — first, his old typewriter; then, the TRS-80; and later, a more conventional PC. But then, Isaac was unusual, and his experience with writer's block was the worst 10 minutes of his life.
      • Jerry Pournelle, in "Chaos Manor: Is there an Upgrade in your future?" in Dr. Dobb's Journal : Software Tools For The Professional Programmer (2005), Vol. 30, Issues 374-379, p. 9
  • When I first met Asimov, I asked him if he was a professor at Boston University. He said no and … asked me where I got my Ph.D. I said I didn't have one and he looked startled. "You mean you're in the same racket I am," he said, "you just read books by the professors and rewrite them?" That's really what I do.
    • Martin Gardner, as quoted in "Every Day" by Sally Helgeson, in Bookletter, Vol. 3, No. 8 (6 December 1976), p. 8
  • Although he spends many pages writing about his friends in the science-fiction community, the true value of Asimov's insight is his reflections on his life — and, in his mind, Asimov was first a genius, second a prolific writer, and only thirdly a sci-fi writer.
    Asimov tells the reader repeatedly that his life would have been easier if he had learned to submerge his ego and get along with others. "It really puzzles me as I look back on it that I didn't make a greater effort to placate the powers that be," he writes. Indeed, it was this inability to get along with others that forced Asimov out of academia and into the solitary life of a freelance writer.
  • I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great, spectacularly prolific writer and scientist, Dr. Isaac Asimov in that essentially functionless capacity. At an A.H.A. memorial service for my predecessor I said, "Isaac is up in Heaven now." That was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. It rolled them in the aisles. Mirth! Several minutes had to pass before something resembling solemnity could be restored.

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