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"Any technological advance can be dangerous. Fire was dangerous from the start, and so (even more so) was speech - and both are still dangerous to this day - but human beings would not be human without them."
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"Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history."

"And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction."

"If you take it step by step, you shall least miss a step!"

"You may not have finished today but the work you did got you closer than if you would have done nothing."

"The present moment is nice but it does not last. Living in it is like waiting in a junction town for the morning limited; the junction may be interesting but some day you will have to leave it and you do not know where the limited will take you."

"You have become more and therefore expect more, but never become too purpose-driven to step back and realize just how far you have progressed."

"The more consciously democratic Americans became, however, the less they were satisfied with a conception of the Promised Land, which went no farther than a pervasive economic prosperity guaranteed by free institutions."
Explore more quotes by Isaac Asimov

"I'm forty-nine, not fifteen, and I've made my peace with myself. Had I been handsome and stupid when I was fifteen, or twenty-one, as, at that time in life, I wished I had been, I would undoubtedly now no longer be handsome--but I'd still be stupid. So, in the long run, I've won out."

"Imagine that. Terrible, terrible, the way we have all bent to the yoke; the affection we have for the harness about us."

"Of course there are worlds. Millions of them! Every star you see has worlds, and most of those you don't see."

"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."

"It is the obvious which is so difficult to see most of the time. People say 'It's as plain as the nose on your face.' But how much of the nose on your face can you see, unless someone holds a mirror up to you?"

"One might suppose that reality must be held to at all costs. However, though that may be the moral thing to do, it is not necessarily the most useful thing to do. The Greeks themselves chose the ideal over the real in their geometry and demonstrated very well that far more could be achieved by consideration of abstract line and form than by a study of the real lines and forms of the world; the greater understanding achieved through abstraction could be applied most usefully to the very reality that was ignored in the process of gaining knowledge."

"So, in a Civil Service where smooth and sociable performance was more useful than an individualistic competence, Enderby went up the scale quickly, and was at the Commissioner level when Baley himself was nothing more than a C-5."

"What's exciting is the actual process of broadening yourself, of knowing there's now 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, there would be a certain pleasure in thinking that you had utilized your life well, learned as much as you could, gathered in as much as possible of the universe, and enjoyed it. There's only this one 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 you can do that much. What a tragedy just to pass through and get nothing out of it."
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