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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index A > Isaac Asimov Quotes > Life

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Isaac Asimov
(2 Jan 1920 - 6 Apr 1992)

Russian-American writer and biochemist who was a prolific author and editor of science fiction and non-fiction.



[Learning is] the actual process of broadening yourself, of knowing there’s a little extra facet of the universe you know about and can think about and can understand. It seems to me that when it’s time to die, and that will come to all of us, there’ll be a certain pleasure in thinking that you had utilized your life well, that you had learned as much as you could, gathered in as much as possible of the universe, and enjoyed it. I mean, there’s only this universe and only this one lifetime to try to grasp it. And, while it is inconceivable that anyone can grasp more than a tiny portion of it, at least do that much. What a tragedy to just pass through and get nothing out of it.
— Isaac Asimov
'Isaac Asimov Speaks' with Bill Moyers in The Humanist (Jan/Feb 1989), 49. Reprinted in Carl Howard Freedman (ed.), Conversations with Isaac Asimov (2005), 139.
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A number of years ago, when I was a freshly-appointed instructor, I met, for the first time, a certain eminent historian of science. At the time I could only regard him with tolerant condescension.
I was sorry of the man who, it seemed to me, was forced to hover about the edges of science. He was compelled to shiver endlessly in the outskirts, getting only feeble warmth from the distant sun of science-in-progress; while I, just beginning my research, was bathed in the heady liquid heat up at the very center of the glow.
In a lifetime of being wrong at many a point, I was never more wrong. It was I, not he, who was wandering in the periphery. It was he, not I, who lived in the blaze.
I had fallen victim to the fallacy of the “growing edge;” the belief that only the very frontier of scientific advance counted; that everything that had been left behind by that advance was faded and dead.
But is that true? Because a tree in spring buds and comes greenly into leaf, are those leaves therefore the tree? If the newborn twigs and their leaves were all that existed, they would form a vague halo of green suspended in mid-air, but surely that is not the tree. The leaves, by themselves, are no more than trivial fluttering decoration. It is the trunk and limbs that give the tree its grandeur and the leaves themselves their meaning.
There is not a discovery in science, however revolutionary, however sparkling with insight, that does not arise out of what went before. “If I have seen further than other men,” said Isaac Newton, “it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.”
— Isaac Asimov
Adding A Dimension: Seventeen Essays on the History of Science (1964), Introduction.
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And above all things, never think that you’re not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning.
— Isaac Asimov
…...
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As far as the meaning of life in general, or in the abstract, as far as I can see, there is none. If all of life were suddenly to disappear from earth and anywhere else it may exist, or if none had ever formed in the first place, I think the Universe would continue to exist without perceptible change. However, it is always possible for an individual to invest his own life with meaning that he can find significant. He can so order his life that he may find as much beauty and wisdom in it as he can, and spread as much of that to others as possible.
— Isaac Asimov
In a book proposal for The Meaning of Life edited by Hugh S. Moorhead, 1989.
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Considering the difficulties represented by the lack of water, by extremes of temperature, by the full force of gravity unmitigated by the buoyancy of water, it must be understood that the spread to land of life forms that evolved to meet the conditions of the ocean represented the greatest single victory won by life over the inanimate environment.
— Isaac Asimov
(1965). In Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 194.
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Everything about microscopic life is terribly upsetting. How can things so small be so important?
— Isaac Asimov
Epigraph in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 156.
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Isaac Asimov quote: Humanity is cutting down its forests, apparently oblivious to the fact that we may not be able to live witho
Background photo copyright Thomas Nugent (cc-by-sa/2.0) (source)
Humanity is cutting down its forests, apparently oblivious to the fact that we may not be able to live without them.
— Isaac Asimov
Epigraph in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 101.
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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.
— Isaac Asimov
In Rosemarie Jarski, Words from the Wise (2007), 18.
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I write for the same reason I breathe—because if I didn't, I would die.
— Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov, Stanley Asimov (ed.), Yours, Isaac Asimov: a Lifetime of Letters (1995), 8.
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Isaac Asimov quote It’s the bees and the flowers.
Macro photo of bee by Forest Wander (cc by-sa 2.0) (source)
I’m tired of that stupid phrase, “the birds and the bees” which is supposed to represent “the facts of life” or the beginnings of the sex instruction of the young. … Well for heaven’s sake, has anyone ever tried to explain sex by talking about the birds and the bees? What have the birds and the bees to do with it? IT’S THE BEES AND THE FLOWERS. Will you get that through your head? IT’S THE BEES AND THE FLOWERS. The bee travels to one flower and picks up pollen from the stamens. The pollen contains the male sex cells of the plant. The bee then travels to another flower (of the same species) and the pollen brushes off onto the pistil, which contains the female sex cells of the plant. … Now in the human being … we don’t rely on bees to do it for us.
— Isaac Asimov
From Isaac Asimov’s letter in 'Hue and Cry' letter column in magazine, James L. Quinn (ed.), IF: Worlds of Science Fiction (Dec 1957), 7, No. 6, 119
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If trouble were as easy to get out of as into—life would be one sweet song.
— Isaac Asimov
Aphorism as given by the fictional character Dezhnev Senior, in Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain (1987), 280.
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In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.
— Isaac Asimov
Aphorism as given by the fictional character Dezhnev Senior, in Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain (1987), 192.
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It is only at the beginning of the age of the dinosaurs that the deep sea, hitherto bare of organisms, was finally invaded by life.
— Isaac Asimov
(1965). In Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 136.
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John Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.
— Isaac Asimov
In Anu Garg, Another Word a Day (2005), 210. If you know a primary print source, please contact Webmaster.
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Life is a journey, but don’t worry, you’ll find a parking spot at the end.
— Isaac Asimov
…...
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Life is one thing—we all lose it sooner or later. Sanity is quite another.
— Isaac Asimov
Aphorism as given by the fictional character Dezhnev Senior, in Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain (1987), 89.
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Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.
— Isaac Asimov
Aphorism as given by the fictional character Dezhnev Senior, in Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain (1987), 71.
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Life originated in the sea, and about eighty percent of it is still there.
— Isaac Asimov
Epigraph in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 134.
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Life would be unbearable if death were not worse yet.
— Isaac Asimov
Aphorism as given by the fictional character Dezhnev Senior, in Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain (1987), 274.
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Of all extinct life-forms, dinosaurs are the most popular. Why that should be is not clear.
— Isaac Asimov
Epigraph in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 202.
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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.
— Isaac Asimov
[Unverified. Please contact Webmaster if you can identify the primary source.]
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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.
— Isaac Asimov
Widely seen on the Web, but always without citation, so regard attribution as uncertain. Webmaster has not yet found reliable verification. Contact Webmaster if you know a primary print source.
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The earth is a book in which we read not only its history, but the history of the living things it has borne.
— Isaac Asimov
Epigraph in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 108.
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The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
— Isaac Asimov
IIsaac Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 281.
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The significant chemicals of living tissue are rickety and unstable, which is exactly what is needed for life.
— Isaac Asimov
As shown, without citation, in Randy Moore, Writing to Learn Science (1997), 226.
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There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
— Isaac Asimov
In 'A Cult of Ignorance', Newsweek (21 Jan 1980), 19. As cited in Igor Ž. Žagar and Polona Kelava, From Formal to Non-Formal: Education, Learning and Knowledge (2014), 74.
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There is no duress like one’s own conscience and it is that which makes life so needlessly bitter.
— Isaac Asimov
Aphorism as given by the fictional character Dezhnev Senior, in Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain (1987), 252.
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What can be more important than the science of life to any intelligent being who has the good fortune to be alive?
— Isaac Asimov
Epigraph in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 36.
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Isaac Asimov quote: Humanity is cutting down its forests, apparently oblivious to the fact that we may not be able to live witho
Background photo copyright Thomas Nugent (cc-by-sa/2.0) (source)
Isaac Asimov quote It’s the bees and the flowers.
Macro photo of bee by Forest Wander (cc by-sa 2.0) (source)

See also:

Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
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