I. Frost's Selected Quotations

Everything at Amazon by and about: Isaac Asimov

One, a robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm;
Two, a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; Three, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
, Laws of Robotics from I. Robot, 1950

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.


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

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

You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.

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


If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

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.

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

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 . . . has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.

Things do change. The only question is that since things are deteriorating so quickly, will society and man's habits change quickly enough?


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.


In science we must be interested in things, not in persons


Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.


To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.


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 centures 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.


To insult someone we call him " bestial."For deliberate cruelty and nature, " human" might be the greater insult.


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


Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know -- and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know -- even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction -- than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too


I am prejudiced against religion because I know the history of religion, and it is the history of human misery and of black crimes.


My feeling is, quite simply, that if there is a God, He has done such a bad job that he isn't worth discussing.


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.


I don't labor over the details of a story in advance. Once I have a vague notion of the idea behind it, and a clear notion of the ending, I just begin and make it up as I go along.


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


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.