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One of Walt Whitman's best-known poems is this one: When I heard the learn'd astronomer,.... The trouble is, Whitman is talking through his hat, but the poor soul didn't know any better

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
Known
Astronomer
Talking
Whitman
Poor
Astronomers
Learn
Walt
Didn
Poems
Best
Hats
Soul
Trouble
Better
Heard

More quotes by Isaac Asimov

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The final end of Eternity, and the beginning of Infinity
Isaac Asimov
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The whole business is the crudest sort of stratagem, since we have no way of foreseeing it to the end. It is a mere paying out of rope on the chance that somewhere along the length of it will be a noose.
Isaac Asimov
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I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library.
Isaac Asimov
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There is no Master but the Master,” he said, “and QT-1 is his prophet.
Isaac Asimov
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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.
Isaac Asimov
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It has always been my ambition to die in harness with my head face down on a keyboard and my nose caught between two of the keys.
Isaac Asimov
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He had read much, if one considers his long life but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.
Isaac Asimov
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Courtiers don't take wagers against the king's skill. There is the deadly danger of winning.
Isaac Asimov
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The important prediction is not the automobile, but the parking problem not radio, but the soap opera not the income tax, but the expense account not the Bomb, but the nuclear stalemate
Isaac Asimov
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Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put on an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up. Well, maybe once.
Isaac Asimov
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I'm gradually managing to cram my mind more and more full of things. I've got this beautiful mind and it's going to die, and it'll all be gone. And then I say, not in my case. Every idea I've ever had I've written down, and it's all there on paper. And I won't be gone it'll be there.
Isaac Asimov
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All humanity could share a common insanity and be immersed in a common illusion while living in a common chaos. That can't be disproved, but we have no choice but to follow our senses.
Isaac Asimov
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If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.
Isaac Asimov
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And [Asimov]'ll sign anything, hardbacks, softbacks, other people's books, scraps of paper. Inevitably someone handed him a blank check on the occasion when I was there, and he signed that without as much as a waver to his smile — except that he signed: 'Harlan Ellison.
Isaac Asimov
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Democracy cannot survive overpopulation.
Isaac Asimov
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This idea [standardized time zones] was first advanced and fought for by Sandford Fleming of Canada and Charles F. Dowd of the United States. I mention them chiefly because like so many benefactors of mankind they have been rewarded by total obscurity.
Isaac Asimov
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I have never, in all my life, not for one moment, been tempted toward religion of any kind. The fact is that I feel no spiritual void. I have my philosophy of life, which does not include any aspect of the supernatural and which I find totally satisfying. I am, in short, a rationalist and believe only that which reason tells me is so.
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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Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
Isaac Asimov
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The first law of dietetics seems to be: if it tastes good, it's bad for you.
Isaac Asimov