Isaac Asimov Science Quotations

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

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.

When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

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

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.

It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong.

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 that one is an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or agnostic. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect that he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.

A scientist is as weak and human as any man, but the pursuit of science may ennoble him even against his will.

Science is uncertain. Theories are subject to revision; observations are open to a variety of interpretations, and scientists quarrel amongst themselves. This is disillusioning for those untrained in the scientific method, who thus turn to the rigid certainty of the Bible instead. There is something comfortable about a view that allows for no deviation and that spares you the painful necessity of having to think.

Intelligence is an accident of evolution, and not necessarily an advantage.

Man's greatest asset is the unsettled mind.

When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion - the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right.

Where any answer is possible, all answers are meaningless.

Radiation, unlike smoking, drinking, and overeating, gives no pleasure, so the possible victims object.

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.

Thinking is the activity I love best, and writing to me is simply thinking through my fingers. I can write up to 18 hours a day. Typing 90 words a minute, I've done better than 50 pages a day. Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up-well, maybe once.

The dangers that face the world can, every one of them, be traced back to science. The salvations that may save the world will, every one of them, be traced back to science.

Science is dangerous. There is no question but that poison gas, genetic engineering, and nuclear weapons and power stations are terrifying. It may be that civilization is falling apart and the world we know is coming to an end. In that case, why no turn to religion and look forward to the Day of Judgment, ... [being] lifted into eternal bliss ... [and] watching the scoffers and disbelievers writhe forever in torment.

We all know we fall. Newton's discovery was that the moon falls, too-and by the same rule that we do.

A neat and orderly laboratory is unlikely. It is, after all, so much a place of false starts and multiple attempts.

Science can be introduced to children well or poorly. If poorly, children can be turned away from science; they can develop a lifelong antipathy; they will be in a far worse condition than if they had never been introduced to science at all.

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.

Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny...