Isaac Asimov

If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live, I’d type a little faster.

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any degree; only about as much as is used in the lowest kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and coloring, will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary.

It is easier to stay out than get out.

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.

Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities.

Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.

Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods loved him because men hated him.

Try, try, try, and keep on trying is the rule that must be followed to become an expert in anything.

Standing beneath this immense, bejeweled, star-spangled dome, breathing in its life, boundaries fall away, possibilities open up and my wings unfold. And I thought that you were the one who was the angel.

I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious – except he purposely shut the eyes of his mind and keep them shut by force.

Trust yourself. You’ve survived a lot, and you’ll survive whatever is coming.

It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate, whose faithful work will answer for him.