Айзек Азимов цитаты

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„Если читать Библию внимательно, то убедишься в правоте атеизма.“

„Если врач скажет, что мне осталось жить пять минут, я не буду рвать на себе волосы. Просто я стану печатать на машинке немного быстрее.“

„В отличие от шахмат, в жизни игра продолжается и после мата.“

„Ни одно здравое решение не может быть принято без принятия во внимание не только мира, как он есть, но и мира, каким он будет.“

„Люди на земле должны дружить. Не думаю, что можно заставить всех людей любить друг друга, но я желал бы уничтожить ненависть между людьми.“

„Замечательное чувство — знать, что ты сам строишь мир.“

„Современная теория создания мира согласно Библии звучит так, будто бы ее создатель сидел и пил целую ночь.“

„Имхотеп был первым архитектором. Он предпринял строительство мастабы для Джосера. Это было первое большое каменное сооружение во всем мире.“

„Бюрократия разрастается, чтобы поспеть за потребностями разрастающейся бюрократии.“

„Каждый волен верить, во что он хочет. Я только против того, чтобы заставлять всех верить во что-то одно.“

„Никогда не позволяйте морали удерживать вас от правильных поступков.“

„Я уверен: книгу ничто не заменит в будущем, так же как ничто не могло заменить её в прошлом.“

„Существует так много способов убивать время, что некоторыми приходится жертвовать.“

„Предрассудки обычно правят людьми при отсутствии достоверных знаний.“

„Психиатр приветствует психиатра: «Вы в полном порядке, а я?»“

„Самая волнующая фраза, какую можно услышать в науке, — фраза, возвещающая о новых открытиях, — вовсе не «Эврика!», а «Вот забавно…».“

„Лучше знать, даже если знание очень скоро повлечет за собой гибель, чем обрести вечную жизнь ценой тусклого скотского непонимания вселенной, которая невидимо для нас бурлит во всем своем волшебстве.“

„Существует только один светильник науки, и зажечь его в каком-либо месте — значит зажечь везде.“

„Первое правило диетики: если это вкусно, значит, это вредно для вас.“

„Пытаюсь ли я найти Бога? Бог умнее меня. Пусть попробует найти меня сам.“

„Существует единый свет науки, и зажечь его где-либо означает зажечь его везде.“

„Бессонница — это когда не можешь спать, даже когда уже пора просыпаться.“

„Предположим, что мы достаточно мудры, чтобы узнавать и знать, однако еще недостаточно мудры, чтобы контролировать свой процесс познания и сами знания, а потому используем их себе во вред. Даже если и так, знание все равно лучше, чем невежество.“

„Мух гораздо больше, чем людей.“

„Эй, это не летающая тарелка! Это моя задница!“

„Я думаю, индивидуальность важнее интеллекта.“

“Every human being lived behind an impenetrable wall of choking mist within which no other but he existed. Occasionally there were the dim signals from deep within the cavern in which another man was located — so that each might grope toward the other. Yet because they did not know one another, and could not understand one another, and dared not trust one another, and felt from infancy the terrors and insecurity of that ultimate isolation — there was the hunted fear of man for man, the savage rapacity of man toward man.”

“Nonsense,” Weston denied, with an involuntary nervous shiver. “That’s completely ridiculous. We had a long discussion at the time we bought Robbie about the First Law of Robotics. You know that it is impossible for a robot to harm a human being; that long before enough can go wrong to alter that First Law, a robot would be completely inoperable. It’s a mathematical impossibility. Besides I have an engineer from U. S. Robots here twice a year to give the poor gadget a complete overhaul. Why, there’s no more chance of anything at all going wrong with Robbie than there is of you or I suddenly going looney—considerably less, in fact. Besides, how are you going to take him away from Gloria?”

“Secrecy as deep as this is past possibility without nonexistence as well.”

“A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”

“The whole business is the crudest sort of stratagem, since we have no way of foreseeing it to the end. It is a mere paying out of rope on the chance that somewhere along the length of it will be a noose.”

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

“It is only afterward that a new idea seems reasonable. To begin with, it usually seems unreasonable.”

“Asimov: Battlestar Galactica for instance, started off with twenty to thirty minutes of space battles which looked exactly like air battles in World War I. You could swear that the space ships were surrounded by air the way the maneuvered. One felt it was unworthy.
SWA Magazine: The Vipers in Battlestar Galactica look like jets. Is this a realistic design for the future?
Asimov: It is as if people in the 1880s were writing fantasy stories about airplanes of the future and they had the pilots lean back at the wheel and yell "whoa" and the airplane came to a halt in mid-air.”

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

“A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.”

“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.”

“It is because you yourself fear the propaganda created, after all, only by the stupidity of your own bigots.”

“[In response to this question by Bill Moyers: What do you see happening to the idea of dignity to human species if this population growth continues at its present rate? ] "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.”

““Is not all this an extraordinary concatenation of coincidence?”
Pelorat said, “If you list it like that—”
“List it any way you please,” said Trevize. “I don’t believe in extraordinary concatenations of coincidence.””

“Economics is on the side of humanity now.”

“Plowboy: You truly feel that all the major changes in history have been caused by science and technology?
Asimov: Those that have proved permanent—the ones that affected every facet of life and made certain that mankind could never go back again—were always brought about by science and technology. In fact, the same twin "movers" were even behind the other "solely" historical changes. Why, for instance, did Martin Luther succeed, whereas other important rebels against the medieval church—like John Huss—fail? Well, Luther was successful because printing had been developed by the time he advanced his cause. So his good earthy writings were put into pamphlets and spread so far and wide that the church officials couldn't have stopped the Protestant Reformation even if they had burned Luther at the stake.
Plowboy: Today the world is changing faster than it has at any other time in history. Do you then feel that science—and scientists—are especially important now?
Asimov: I do think so, and as a result it's my opinion that anyone who can possibly introduce science to the nonscientist should do so. After all, we don't want scientists to become a priesthood. We don't want society's technological thinkers to know something that nobody else knows—to "bring down the law from Mt. Sinai"—because such a situation would lead to public fear of science and scientists. And fear, as you know, can be dangerous.
Plowboy: But scientific knowledge is becoming so incredibly vast and specialized these days that it's difficult for any individual to keep up with it all.
Asimov: Well, I don't expect everybody to be a scientist or to understand every new development. After all, there are very few Americans who know enough about football to be a referee or to call the plays … but many, many people understand the sport well enough to follow the game. It's not important that the average citizen understand science so completely that he or she could actually become involved in research, but it is very important that people be able to "follow the game" well enough to have some intelligent opinions on policy.
Every subject of worldwide importance—each question upon which the life and death of humanity depends—involves science, and people are not going to be able to exercise their democratic right to direct government policy in such areas if they don't understand what the decisions are all about.”

“Such unsubtle escapism! Really, Dr. Fara, such folly smacks of genius. A lesser mind would be incapable of it.”

“Hypocrisy is a universal phenomenon. It ends with death, but not before.”

“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.”

““Ponyets! They sent you?”
“Pure chance,” said Ponyets, bitterly, “or the work of my own personal malevolent demon.””

“It’s a poor atom blaster that won’t point both ways.”

“The foundation of all technology is fire.”

“If you're going to write a story, avoid contemporary references. They date a story and they have no staying power.”

“Surely there is no language more majestic than that of Shakespeare, Milton, and the King James Bible, and if I am to have one language that I know as only a native can know it, I consider myself unbelievably fortunate that it is English.”

“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.””

“The history of science is full of revolutionary advances that required small insights that anyone might have had, but that, in fact, only one person did.”

“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.”

“Books … hold within them the gathered wisdom of humanity, the collected knowledge of the world's thinkers, the amusement and excitement built up by the imaginations of brilliant people. Books contain humor, beauty, wit, emotion, thought, and, indeed, all of life. Life without books is empty.”

“It seems an uncommonly woundabout and hopelessly wigmawolish method of getting anywheahs.”