“Society is much more easily soothed than one's own conscience.”
More from Isaac Asimov on Philosophy
“For what could any Entity, conscious of eternal existence, want – but an end?”
“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
“To insult someone we call him 'bestial. For deliberate cruelty and nature, 'human' might be the greater insult.”
“Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.”
“A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.”
“Intelligence is an accident of evolution, and not necessarily an advantage.”
“...Changelessness is decay.""A paradox. There is no decay without a change for the worse.""Changelessness is a change for the worse...”
“Where is the world whose people don't prefer a comfortable, warm, and well-worn belief, however illogical, to the chilly winds of uncertainty?”
“To insult someone we call him 'bestial'. For deliberate cruelty and nature, 'human' might be the greater insult.”
“If a conclusion is not poetically balanced, it cannot be scientifically true.”
Others on Philosophy
Ludwig Wittgenstein
22 quotes“The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood.”
Christopher Hitchens
22 quotes“How much vanity must be concealed – not too effectively at that – in order to pretend that one is the personal object of...”
Nietzsche
22 quotes“One does not hate as long as one has a low esteem of someone, but only when one esteems him as an equal or a superior.”
Carl Jung
21 quotes“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.”
Immanuel Kant
20 quotes“Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.”
Heraclitus
19 quotes“All things flow nothing abides.”
H. L. Mencken
17 quotes“We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.”
C.S. Lewis
15 quotes“[Consciousness] is either inexplicable illusion, or else revelation.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
14 quotes“Consciousness is man's greatest misfortune, still I know that man loves it and will not exchange it for any satisfaction...”
Samuel Beckett
14 quotes“The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.”
Napoleon
14 quotes“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.”
Joseph Conrad
13 quotes“The mind of man is capable of anything - because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future.”