Good,” said the First Speaker. “And tell me, what do you think of all this. A finished work of art, is it not?”“Definitely!”“Wrong! It is not.” This, with sharpness. “It is the first lesson you must unlearn. The Seldom Plan is neither complete nor correct. Instead, it is merely the best that could be done at the time. Over a dozen generations of men have pored over these equations, worked at them, taken them apart to the last decimal place, and put them together again. They’ve done more than that. They’ve watched nearly four hundred years pass and against the predictions and equations, they’ve checked reality, and they have learned.

— Isaac Asimov

Have you ever come across something you couldn't explain?"" Explain in what way? I could explain a ghost by saying, 'yes, that's a ghost.' I take it that's not what you mean.

— Isaac Asimov

Have you ever come across something you couldn't explain?"" Explain in what way? I could explain a ghost by saying, 'yes, that's a ghost.' I take it, that's not what you mean.

— Isaac Asimov

Having reached 451 books as of now doesn't help the situation. If I were to be dying now, I would be murmuring, "Too bad! Only four hundred fifty-one." (Those would be my next-to-last words. The last ones will be: "I love you, Janet.") [They were. -Janet.]

— Isaac Asimov

He slept that night the sleep of a successfully stubborn man.

— Isaac Asimov

How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection. An artist is emotional, they think, and uses only his intuition; he sees all at once and has no need of reason. A scientist is cold, they think, and uses only his reason; he argues carefully step by step, and needs no imagination. That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.

— Isaac Asimov

How then to enforce peace? Not by reason, certainly, nor by education. If a man could not look at the fact of peace and the fact of war and choose the former in preference to the latter, what additional argument could persuade him? What could be more eloquent as a condemnation of war than war itself?

— Isaac Asimov

Human beings sometimes find a kind of pleasure in nursing painful emotions, in blaming themselves without reason or even against reason.

— Isaac Asimov

Humanists recognize that it is only when people feel free to think for themselves, using reason as their guide, that they are the best capable of developing values that succeed in satisfying human needs and serving human interests.

— Isaac Asimov

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.

— Isaac Asimov