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Isaac Asimov:
Writer / Chemist
Born: 2 January 1920
Birthplace: Petrovichi, U.S.S.R.
Died: 6 April 1992 (AIDS)
Best Known As: Prolific writer of popular science and science fiction
Isaac Asimov was born in the former Soviet Union, but grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He taught biochemistry at Boston University until he retired in 1958 to become a full-time writer. Asimov had been publishing short stories since the late 1930s, and in 1952 published his first novel. The author of the classic I, Robot series and The Foundation Trilogy, Asimov wrote more than 400 books and won every major science fiction award. He also wrote popular books and essays on science and technology, earning him the nickname "The Great Explainer."
According to the Isaac Asimov FAQ, the author died of "heart and kidney failure, which were complications of the HIV infection he contracted from a transfusion of tainted blood during his December 1983 triple-bypass operation." HIV was not revealed as the cause of his death until 2002, when his widow Janet published the memoir It's Been a Good Life.
Websites:
Literatuur - Essays
- The "Threat" of Creationism
- The Reagan Doctrine - 1981
- On Science and the Bible, interview with Isaac Asimov - 1982
Quotes
- Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.
-- Isaac Asimov (attributed: source unknown)
- To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.
--Isaac Asimov, "On Religiosity," Free Inquiry
- When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.
-- Isaac Asimov, "The Relativity of Wrong" (1989)
- Creationists make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
-- Isaac Asimov (attributed: source unknown)
- Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centures since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.
-- Isaac Asimov, Canadian Atheists Newsletter, 1994
- One would suppose that the battle for religious liberty was won in the United States two hundred years ago. However, in the time since, and right now, powerful voices are always raised in favor of bigotry and thought control. It is useful, then, to have a compendium of the thoughts of great men and women of all faiths (and of none) on the subject, to convince us that we men and woman of freedom are not and never have been alone.
-- Isaac Asimov, from Albert J. Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom
- If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.
-- Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov: A Memoir
- To rebel against a powerful political, economic, religious, or social establishment is very dangerous and very few people do it, except, perhaps, as part of a mob. To rebel against the "scientific" establishment, however, is the easiest thing in the world, and anyone can do it and feel enormously brave, without risking as much as a hangnail. Thus, the vast majority, who believe in astrology and think that the planets have nothing better to do than form a code that will tell them whether tomorrow is a good day to close a business deal or not, become all the more excited and enthusiastic about the bilge when a group of astronomers denounces it.
-- Isaac Asimov (attributed: source unknown)
- I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.
-- Isaac Asimov, in "Free Inquiry", Spring 1982, vol.2 no.2, p. 9
- Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.
-- Isaac Asimov (attributed: source unknown)
- Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.
--Isaac Asimov, "On Religiosity," Free Inquiry
- When I die I won't go to heaven or hell, there will just be nothingness.
-- Isaac Asimov, interviewed in Bill Moyers' television series "A World of Ideas"
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