Isaac Asimov: Frases en inglés
Isaac Asimov era escritor estadounidense. Frases en inglés.“Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”
As quoted in The Mammoth Book of Zingers, Quips, and One-Liners (2004) edited by Geoff Tibballs, p. 299
General sources
Isaac Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), edited with Jason A. Shulman, p. 281
General sources
“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.”
Variante: If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster. Časopis LIFE, január 1984
“Properly read, it is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”
As quoted in Notes for a Memoir : On Isaac Asimov, Life, and Writing (2006) by Janet Jeppson Asimov, p. 58
General sources
Variante: Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.
Contexto: If you suspect that my interest in the Bible is going to inspire me with sudden enthusiasm for Judaism and make me a convert of mountain‐moving fervor and that I shall suddenly grow long earlocks and learn Hebrew and go about denouncing the heathen — you little know the effect of the Bible on me. Properly read, it is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.
“What I will be remembered for are the Foundation Trilogy and the Three Laws of Robotics.”
Yours, Isaac Asimov (20 September 1973) <!-- page 329 -->
General sources
Contexto: What I will be remembered for are the Foundation Trilogy and the Three Laws of Robotics. What I want to be remembered for is no one book, or no dozen books. Any single thing I have written can be paralleled or even surpassed by something someone else has done. However, my total corpus for quantity, quality and variety can be duplicated by no one else. That is what I want to be remembered for.
"Introduction" to The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973)<!-- , p. ix -->
The Last Question (1956)
Contexto: "The Last Question" is my personal favorite, the one story I made sure would not be omitted from this collection. Why is it my favorite? For one thing I got the idea all at once and didn't have to fiddle with it; and I wrote it in white-heat and scarcely had to change a word. This sort of thing endears any story to any writer.
Then, too, it has had the strangest effect on my readers. Frequently someone writes to ask me if I can give them the name of a story, which they think I may have written, and tell them where to find it. They don't remember the title but when they describe the story it is invariably "The Last Question". This has reached the point where I recently received a long-distance phone call from a desperate man who began, "Dr. Asimov, there's a story I think you wrote, whose title I can't remember—" at which point I interrupted to tell him it was "The Last Question" and when I described the plot it proved to be indeed the story he was after. I left him convinced I could read minds at a distance of a thousand miles.
No other story I have written has anything like this effect on my readers — producing at once an unshakeable memory of the plot and an unshakeable forgettery of the title and even author. I think it may be that the story fills them so frighteningly full, that they can retain none of the side-issues.
“When you write a short story … you had better know the ending first.”
The Casebook of the Black Widowers (1980), p. 177
General sources
Contexto: When you write a short story... you had better know the ending first. The end of a story is only the end to the reader. To the writer, it's the beginning. If you don't know exactly where you're going every minute you're writing, you'll never get there — or anywhere.
"My Own View" in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1978) edited by Robert Holdstock; later published in Asimov on Science Fiction (1981)
General sources
Fuente: The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories
"The Tragedy of the Moon," The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (July 1972)
General sources
Fuente: Short fiction, The Early Asimov Book One (1972), Half-Breed (p. 160)
“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”
Part IV, The Traders, section 1; originally published as “The Wedge” in Astounding (October 1944)
Fuente: The Foundation series (1951–1993), Foundation (1951)
"A Cult of Ignorance", Newsweek (21 January 1980) http://media.aphelis.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ASIMOV_1980_Cult_of_Ignorance.pdf
General sources
Contexto: There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has 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."