Isaac Asimov on Science

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!', but 'That's funny ...'"

"Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not."

"The job of science will never be done, it will just sink deeper and deeper into never-ending complexity."

"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."

"Science fiction offers its writers chances of embarrassment that no other form of fiction does."

"There is more to a science fiction story than the science it contains. There is also the story."

"There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere."

"It is the nature of science that answers automatically pose new and more subtle questions."

"The Law of conservation of energy tells us we can't get something for nothing, but we refuse to believe it. – Book of Science and Nature Quotations, 1988."

"No matter how various the subject matter I write on, I was a science-fiction writer first and it is as a science-fiction writer that I want to be identified."

"Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold. What does the scientist have to offer in exchange? Uncertainty! Insecurity!"

"Internet Science Fiction Database page for Isaac Asimov"

"Scientific theories can always be improved and are improved. That is one of the glories of science. It is the authoritarian view of the Universe that is frozen in stone and cannot be changed, so that once it is wrong, it is wrong forever."

"Weisinger, a couple of years ago, made up the following story: "Isaac Asimov was asked how Superman could fly faster than the speed of light, which was supposed to be an absolute limit. To this Asimov replied, 'That the speed of light is a limit is a theory; that Superman can travel faster than light is a fact.'"

"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."

"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."

"Science fiction may be defined as that branch of literature which deals with the response of human beings to advances in science and technology. Actual change in science and technology, occurring quickly enough and striking deeply enough to affect a human being in the course of his normal lifetime, is a phenomenon peculiar to the world only since the Industrial Revolution ... The first well-known writer who responded to this new factor in human affairs by dealing regularly with science fiction, by studying the effect of additional scientific advance upon mankind ... was Jules Verne. In the English language, the early master was H. G. Wells. Between them, they laid the foundation for every theme upon which science fiction writers have been ringing variations ever since."

"It's my belief that the Universe possesses, in its essence, fractal properties of a very complex sort and that the pursuit of science shares those properties. It follows that any part of the Universe that remains un-understood, and any part of scientific investigation that remains unresolved, however small that might be in comparison to what is understood and resolved, contains within it all the complexity of the original. Therefore, we'll never finish. No matter how far we go, the road ahead will be as long as it was at the start, and that's the secret of the Universe."