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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.

Isaac Asimov

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Isaac Asimov
Age: 72 †
Born: 1920
Born: January 2
Died: 1992
Died: April 6
Author
Autobiographer
Biochemist
Journalist
Non-Fiction Writer
Novelist
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Science Writer
Scientist
Isaak Osimov
Paul French
Asimov
Isaak Ozimov
Use
Remains
Better
Ignorance
Enough
Learning
Even
Control
Wise
Wisdom
Comprehension
Knowledge
Suppose
Learn
Destroy

More quotes by Isaac Asimov

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I don't subscribe to the thesis, 'Let the buyer beware,' I prefer the disregarded one that goes, 'Let the seller be honest.'
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Before another century is done it will be hard for people to imagine a time when humanity was confined to one world, and it will seem to them incredible that there was ever anybody who doubted the value of space and wanted to turn his or her back on the Universe.
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Uncertainty that comes from knowledge (knowing what you don't know) is different from uncertainty coming from ignorance.
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Naturally, there's got to be a limit for I don't expect to live forever, but I do intend to hang on as long as possible.
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With both people and computers on the job, computer error can be more quickly tracked down and corrected by people and, conversely, human error can be more quickly corrected by computers. What it amounts to is that nothing serious can happen unless human error and computer error take place simultaneously. And that hardly ever happens.
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Intelligence is an accident of evolution, and not necessarily an advantage.
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I don’t like anything that’s got to be. I want to know why.
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And in man is a three-pound brain which, as far as we know, is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter in the universe.
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When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.
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Democracy cannot survive overpopulation.
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When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion - the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right.
Isaac Asimov
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There was this superstitious fear on the part of the pygmies of the present for the relics of the giants of the past.
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I don't believe in personal immortality the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books.
Isaac Asimov
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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
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A myth or legend is simply not made up out of a vacuum. Nothing is--or can be. Somehow there is a kernel of truth behind it, however distorted that might be.
Isaac Asimov
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The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of physics, and if the probabilities of error are greater, it is only because history does not deal with as many humans as physics does atoms, so that individual variations count for more.
Isaac Asimov
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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.
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So, then, what is style? There are two chief aspects of any piece of writing: 1) what you say and 2) how you say it. The former is content and the latter is style.
Isaac Asimov
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True literacy is becoming an arcane art, and the nation is steadily dumbing down.
Isaac Asimov
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It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong.
Isaac Asimov