Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Isaac Asimov

Quote by Isaac Asimov

“Stephen, how do we know what the ultimate good of Humanity will entail? We haven’t at our disposal the infinite factors that the Machine has at its! Perhaps, to give you a not unfamiliar example, our entire technical civilization has created more unhappiness and misery than it has removed. Perhaps an agrarian or pastoral civilization, with less culture and less people would be better. If so, the Machines must move in that direction, preferably without telling us, since in our ignorant prejudices we only know that what we are used to, is good — and we would then fight change. Or perhaps a complete urbanization, or a completely caste-ridden society, or complete anarchy, is the answer. We don’t know. Only the Machines know, and they are going there and taking us with them.”

Quote by Isaac Asimov

Book:I, Robot
Create image

Work

I, Robot

Isaac Asimov's 'I, Robot' is a seminal work in the science fiction genre, featuring a series of interconnected tales that delve into the potential consequences of creating sentient machines. The stories examine themes of morality, autonomy, and the nature of humanity in the face of advancing technology. more

Author

Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov, born on January 2, 1920 in Poland and died on April 6, 1992 in the United States, was a renowned American science fiction author, science writer, and literary critic, known as the 'Father of Science Fiction'. His works covered a wide range of science fiction themes, including robots, space exploration, and time travel, and had a profound impact on science fiction literature and the popularization of science. more

You May Also Like

“But take a moment to consider the miracle... Light is just electromagnetic radiation. Sound is just waves of pressure. Smells are just small molecules. It's not obvious that we should be able to detect any of those things, let alone convert them into electrical signals or derive from those signals the spectacle of a sunrise, or the sound of a voice, or the scent of baking bread. The senses trans- form the coursing chaos of the world into perceptions and experiences-things we can react to and act upon. They allow biology to tame physics. They turn stimuli into information. They pull relevance from randomness, and weave meaning from miscellany.”

Science
Book:An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
Create image

“Even before vibrations are detected by its lyriform organs, the web determines which vibrations will arrive at the leg. The spider will eat whatever it's aware of, and it sets the bounds of its awareness--the extent of its Umwelt--by spinning different kinds of webs. The web, then, is not just an extension of a spider's senses but an extension of its cognition. In a very real way, the spider thinks with its web. Tuning the silk is like tuning its own mind.”

ScienceAnimals
Book:An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
Create image

“...when [a black widow spider] is hungry, it can also draw its legs into a "crouch"--a sensory power pose that retunes its joints to higher frequencies...this stance might shift the spider's Umwelt toward the movements of smaller prey. It might also help it to ignore the low frequencies of wind. It's like a postural squint, which allows the spider to focus its attention. The analogy isn't exact, though, since squinting helps us to focus on particular parts of space. Here, the black widow's posture focuses on different parts of information space. It's as if a human could emphasize the red parts of our vision by squatting, or single out high-pitched sounds by going into downward dog.”

ScienceAnimals
Book:An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
Create image

“The reasons for this paring back of synapses is a mystery, but synaptic pruning is thought to sharpen and reinforce the "correct" synapses, while removing the weak and unnecessary ones. "It reinforces an old intuition," a psychiatrist in Boston told me. "The secret of learning is the systematic elimination of excess. We grow, mostly, by dying.”

ScienceGrowthLearningBiology
Book:The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human
Create image

“This story illustrates powerfully how Darwin's theory, together with how it is often promoted to the public, can bias investigators and lead them along blind alleys. The "science" that supposedly has "proved" evolution is not capable of doing any such thing because it deals with past events. This means that it is more equivalent to forensic science, where clues are gathered which have to be very carefully weighed by experts in a court of law. The jury must then decide what the truth of the matter is from the balance of probabilities. Looking back, it is apparent that there was never powerful evidence for a stooping brutish, ape-like Neanderthal man, but that some evidence was withheld from the "jury" of public opinion.”

ScienceEvolutionCreationismCreation Science
Book:Bone of Contention: Is Evolution True
Create image

“We often think of peace as the absence of war, that if powerful countries would reduce their weapon arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds- our own prejudices, fears and ignorance. Even if we transport all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the roots of bombs are still there, in our hearts and minds, and sooner or later we will make new bombs. To work for peace is to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women. To prepare for war, to give millions of men and women the opportunity to practice killing day and night in their hearts, is to plant millions of seeds of violence, anger, frustration, and fear that will be passed on for generations to come.”

InspirationalWarPeaceViolence
Book:Living Buddha, Living Christ
Create image