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What lasts in the reader's mind is not the phrase but the effect the phrase created: laughter, tears, pain, joy. If the phrase is not affecting the reader, what's it doing there? Make it do its job or cut it without mercy or remorse.

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
Lasts
Effect
Pain
Laughter
Jobs
Created
Affecting
Without
Tears
Remorse
Writing
Reader
Mind
Cutting
Phrase
Make
Effects
Phrases
Joy
Mercy

More quotes by Isaac Asimov

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The cure for advanced gullibility is to go to sleep and consider matters again the next day.
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I consider violence an uneconomical way of attaining an end. There are always better substitutes, though they may sometimes be a little less direct.
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A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
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There is nothing so eternally adhesive as the memory of power.
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Humanity is cutting down its forests, apparently oblivious to the fact that we may not be able to live without them.
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Was there anything more exciting in life than seeking answers?
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In a properly automated and educated world, then, machines may prove to be the true humanizing influence. It may be that machines will do the work that makes life possible and that human beings will do all the other things that make life pleasant and worthwhile
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There are many aspects of the universe that still cannot be explained satisfactorily by science but ignorance implies only ignorance that may someday be conquered. To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.
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What would you consider a good job? Answered as follows: A good job is one in which I don't have to work, and get paid a lot of money. When I heard that I cheered and yelled and felt that he should be given an A+, for he had perfectly articulated the American dream of those who despise knowledge. What a politician that kid would have made.
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Only a lie that wasn't ashamed of itself could possibly succeed.
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It is precisely because it is fashionable for Americans to know no science, even though they may be well educated otherwise, that they so easily fall prey to nonsense.
Isaac Asimov
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He always pictured himself a libertarian, which to my way of thinking means I want the liberty to grow rich and you can have the liberty to starve. It's easy to believe that no one should depend on society for help when you yourself happen not to need such help.
Isaac Asimov
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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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The law of conservation of energy tells us we can't get something for nothing, but we refuse to believe it.
Isaac Asimov
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Self-education is a continuing source of pleasure to me, for the more I know, the fuller my life is and the better I appreciate my own existence
Isaac Asimov
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There is no more desire to live past one's time than to die before it.
Isaac Asimov
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I have never written a book that didn't teach me far more than it taught my reader.
Isaac Asimov
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If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.
Isaac Asimov
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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
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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