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3e98976
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No individual death among human beings is important. Someone who dies leaves his work behind and that does not entirely die. It never entirely dies as long as humanity exists.
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mortality
humanity
elijah
robots
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Isaac Asimov |
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e102636
|
ykh mwjwd agh bh wjwd bdy, chh my khwhd - jz pyn yn bdyt?
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existence
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Isaac Asimov |
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f6f18b7
|
Q. Would you repeat, Dr. Seldon, your thoughts concerning the future of Trantor? A. I have said, and I say again, that Trantor will lie in ruins within the next three centuries. Q. You do not consider your statement a disloyal one? A. No, sir. Scientific truth is beyond loyalty and disloyalty." Q. You are sure that your statement represents scientific truth? A. I am. Q. On what basis? A. On the basis of the mathematics of psychohistory. Q. ..
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Isaac Asimov |
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afa2c4b
|
Every vice of the Empire has been repeated in the Foundation. Inertia! Our ruling class knows one law; no change. Despotism! They know one rule; force. Maldistribution! They know one desire; to hold what is theirs.
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foundation
science-fiction
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Isaac Asimov |
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c02747c
|
The Earth," he said, "is a large and very complex lifeboat. We still do not know what can or can't be done with a proper distribution of resources and it is notorious that to this very day we have not really made an effort to distribute them. In many places on Earth, food is wasted daily, and it is that knowledge that drives hungry men mad."
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Isaac Asimov |
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7026db8
|
We must not be taken in by the myth of youth, the unending propaganda to the effect that young men are younger than old men; that they are better looking; that they are slimmer, stronger and more athletic; that they can hold a girl in more romantic fashion and speak more sweetly.
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isaac-asimov
the-sensuous-dirty-old-man
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Isaac Asimov |
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6292f16
|
An unpleasant nest of nasty, materialistic and aggressive people, careless of the rights of others, imperfectly democratic at home though quick to see the minor slaveries of others, and greedy without end.
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Isaac Asimov |
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d31fe87
|
On Earth, we are unmanned by our longing for a pastoral past that never really existed; and that, if it had existed, could never exist again...on the Moon, there is no past to long for or dream about. There is no direction but forward.
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Isaac Asimov |
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e3ec7e9
|
Rules, established with reason and justice, can easily outlive their usefulness as circumstances change, yet can remain in force through inertia. It is then not only right, but useful, to break those rules as a way of advertising the fact that they have become useless--or even actually harmful.
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Isaac Asimov |
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f9ef1ec
|
The word 'tradition' covered it all, as it covered so many things, some useful, some foolish.
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Isaac Asimov |
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6eff941
|
But emotion had come upon him after all. Not for fifty billion people. What in Time did he care for fifty billion people? There was just one. One person.
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time
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Isaac Asimov |
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573e9b8
|
People say 'It's as plain as the noise on your face.' But how much of the nose on your face can you see, unless someone hold a mirror up to you?
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Isaac Asimov |
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6df5d26
|
It was a long time since he'd done any actual clinical work, and obviously his sojourn among the academics at Saro University had attenuated the professional detachment that allows members of the healing arts to confront the ill without being overwhelmed by compassion and sorrow. He was surprised at that, how tenderhearted he seemed to have become, how thin-skinned.
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healing
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Isaac Asimov |
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206d322
|
With the destruction of our social fabric, science will be broken into a million pieces. Individuals will know much of exceedingly tiny facets of what there is to know.
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Isaac Asimov |
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894c63d
|
Carbon is the basis of human life and iron of robot life. It becomes easy to speak of C/Fe when you wish express a culture that combines the best of the two on an equal but parallel basis.
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Isaac Asimov |
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0743b40
|
We would grow tired of it, Grandpa, if it were beautiful all the time. A little change from night to night is good for us.' 'For you, because you're young, Wanda. You have many, many evenings ahead of you. I don't. I want more good ones.
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Isaac Asimov |
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abd5bcb
|
Meaning well is a poor defense,
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Isaac Asimov |
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96970a9
|
After all, all devices have their dangers. The discovery of speech introduced communication--and lies. The discovery of fire introduced cooking--and arson. The discovery of the compass improved navigation--and destroyed civilizations in Mexico and Peru. The automobile is marvelously useful--and kills Americans by the tens of thousands each year. Medical advances have saved lives by the millions--and intensified the population explosion.
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Isaac Asimov |
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9be307b
|
He supposed it was inevitable. Dip a person into one particular specialty deeply enough and long enough, and he would automatically begin to assume that specialists in all other fields were magicians, judging the depth of their wisdom by the breadth of his own ignorance...
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Isaac Asimov |
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ee6d0ee
|
To [the government] it didn't matter what happened to the American people as long as america in the abstract was kept strong.
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government
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Isaac Asimov |
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a07f54e
|
These are facts which, with the self-evident proposition that no being can create another being superior to itself, smashes your silly hypothesis to nothing.
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Isaac Asimov |
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8f928c1
|
In 's ... it was in that novel that, for the first time, I learned Neptune had a satellite named Triton... It was from that I first learned there was a Mato Grosso area in the Amazon basin. It was from and other stories by that I first heard of relativity. The pleasure of reading about such things in the dramatic and fascinating form of science fiction gave me a push toward science that was irresistible. It was science fiction that ..
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science
golden-age-science-fiction
golden-age-sf
pulp-fiction
science-fiction
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Isaac Asimov |
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9fef947
|
Do you know what it is to play a part? To split your personality deliberately for twenty-four hours a day? Even when with friends? Even when alone, so that you will never forget inadvertently? To be a dilettante? To be eternally amused? To be of no account? To be so effete and faintly ridiculous that you have convinced all who know you of your own worthlessness? All so that your life may be safe even though it means it has become barely wor..
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Isaac Asimov |
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8093271
|
I've seen many people with status, but I'm still looking for a happy one. Status won't sit still under you; you have to continually fight to keep from sinking.
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Isaac Asimov |
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db9e5c2
|
I have the shape of a human being and organs equivalent to those of a human being. My organs, in fact, are identical to some of those in a prosthetized human being. I have contributed artistically, literally, and scientifically to human culture as much as any human being now alive. What more can one ask?
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robots
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Isaac Asimov |
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a1a3e0f
|
The work of each individual contributes to a totality, and so becomes an undying part of the totality. That totality of human lives--past and present and to come--forms a tapestry that has been in existence now for many tens of thousands of years and has been growing more elaborate and, on the whole, more beautiful in all that time. Even the Spacers are an offshoot of the tapestry and they, too, add to the elaborateness and beauty of the pa..
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Isaac Asimov |
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d6bef17
|
Gratitude is best and most effective when it does not evaporate itself in empty phrases.
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Isaac Asimov |
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ee33d72
|
Space, man, have you no respect for science?
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Isaac Asimov |
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1bbe902
|
In memory yet green, in joy still felt, The scenes of life rise sharply into view.
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Isaac Asimov |
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135d12e
|
I wouldn't want [the people of Baleyworld] to live that long as a general thing. The pace of historical and intellectual advance would then become too slow. Those at the top would stay in power too long. Baleyworld would sink into conversation and decay - as your world has done.
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progress
immortality
death
longevity
decadence
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Isaac Asimov |
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cdc3b9d
|
And Mallow laughed joyously. "You've missed, Sutt, missed as badly as the Commdor himself. You've missed everything, and understood nothing. The Empire has always been a realm of colossal resources. They've calculated everything in planets, in stellar systems, in whole sectors of the Galaxy. Their generators are gigantic because they thought in gigantic fashion. "But we,--we, our little Foundation, our single world almost without metallic r..
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Isaac Asimov |
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ad010d7
|
The colonization of space is the only possible salvation of Earth.
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Isaac Asimov |
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37083f3
|
Mr. Advocate, the rotten tree-trunk, until the very moment when the storm-blast breaks it in two, has all the appearance of might it ever had. The storm-blast whistles through the branches of the Empire even now. Listen with the ears of psychohistory, and you will hear the creaking.
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Isaac Asimov |
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06687c5
|
Changelessness is decay." "A paradox. There is no decay without a change for the worse." "Changelessness is a change for the worse"
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kelden-amadiro
vasilia-aliena
robots
science-fiction
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Isaac Asimov |
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b53d62d
|
The religion we have is our all-important instrument towards that end. With it we have brought the Four Kingdoms under our control, even at the moment when they would have crushed us. It is the most potent device known with which to control men and worlds.
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Isaac Asimov |
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9aca90a
|
He was going mad and knew it, and somewhere deep inside a bit of sanity was screaming, struggling to fight off the hopeless flood of black terror. It was very horrible to go mad and know that you were going mad -- to know that in a little minute you would be here physically and yet all the real essence would be dead and drowned in the black madness. For this was the Dark -- the Dark and the Cold and the Doom.
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Isaac Asimov |
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d07e6d7
|
Feet, for tens of thousands of years, had clogged and shuffled in the mud - and held down the minds which, for an equal time, had been fit for the companionship of the stars.
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Isaac Asimov |
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369a785
|
The Library was outmoded and archaic--it had been so even in Ebling Mis's time--but that was all to the good. Pelorat always rubbed his hands with excitement when he thought of an old and outmoded Library. The older and the more outmoded, the more likely it was to have what he needed. In his dreams, he would enter the Library and ask in breathless alarm, 'Has the Library been modernized? Have you thrown out the old tapes and computerization..
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Isaac Asimov |
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d7d29aa
|
Surely, if we take on thinking partners--or, at the least, thinking servants--in the form of machines, we will be more comfortable with them, and will relate to them more easily, if they are shaped like humans. It will be easier to be friends with human-shaped robots than with specialized machines of unrecognizable shape. And I sometimes think that, in the desperate straits of humanity today, we would be grateful to have nonhuman friends, ..
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Isaac Asimov |
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c4342b6
|
You must have minimalism because every change, any change, has myriad side effects that can't always be allowed for. If the change is too great and the side effects too many, then it becomes certain that the outcome will be far removed from anything you've planned and that it would be entirely unpredictable.
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Isaac Asimov |
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fdb401a
|
Give us but the chance and a new generation of Earthmen would grow to maturity, lacking insularity and believing wholeheartedly in the oneness of Man.
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Isaac Asimov |
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0261040
|
Presumably, such is the folly of human beings, the prospects of intellectual suicide might not stop them from indulging their hatred,
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Isaac Asimov |
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2fb44ad
|
An individual life is one thread in the tapestry and what is one thread compared to the whole?
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Isaac Asimov |
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107b4ba
|
Zeroth Law...
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Isaac Asimov |