Isaac Asimov on Life

"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."

"A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws."

"In my fiction I am careful to make everything probable and to tie up all loose ends. Real life is not hampered by such considerations."

"When an old person dies who has been a part of your life, it is part of your youth that dies."

"Isaac Asimov had writer's block once. It was the worst ten minutes of his life." – Unknown"

"I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn't, I would die."

"Secrecy as deep as this is past possibility without nonexistence as well."

"John Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war."

"And above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning."

"Religion is more conservative than any other aspect of human life."

"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."

"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?"

"All life is nucleic acid; the rest is commentary"

"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."

"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.' That was the first Asimovian science-fiction sentence."

"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."

"It is very likely that there are many, many planets carrying life, even intelligent life, throughout the universe, because there are so many stars. By sheer chance, even if those chances are small, a great many life forms and a great many intelligences may exist."

"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."