Isaac Asimov Quotes

Caution is the path to mediocrity.

There's a real danger in trying to stay king of the mountain. You stop taking risks, you stop being as creative, because you're trying to maintain a position. Apart from anything else that really takes the fun out of it.

It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire.

I rose too high, loved too hard, dared too much. I tried to grasp a star, overreached, and fell.

Being realistic is the most commonly travelled road to mediocracy

Security and safety were the reward of dullness.

How can you admire a human who consciously embraces the bland, the mediocre, and the safe rather than risk the suffering that disappointment can bring?

Whoever we are here, we might be princesses somewhere else. Or writers. Or scientists. Or presidents. Or whatever the hell we want to be that everyone else says we can't.

It is better, I think, to grab at the stars than to sit flustered because you know you cannot reach them.

Ambition will take you And ride you too far and Conservatism bring you to boredom once more Sit down by the river And watch the stream flow Recall all the dreams That you once used to know The things you've forgotten That took you away To pastures not greener but meaner.

The minute you know you're on safe ground, you're dead.

Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.

Don't wait for the stars to align, reach up and rearrange them the way you want...create your own constellation

If you decide to just go with the flow, you'll end up where the flow goes, which is usually downhill, often leading to a big pile of sludge and a life of unhappiness. You'll end up doing what everyone else is doing.

When you make something that everyone likes, it's very easy to say, "Well, I'll just repeat that." Because that was easy. I have a formula. But creatively, it's not very interesting.

If we remove desire to be better, we become mediocre.

We encourage one another in mediocrity.

There is no place for little minds in a great work

I know what you want. You want a story that won't surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won't make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality.

When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.

Neat trick: to be roused to ambition and reconciled to one's mediocrity at the same time.

Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don't have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don't have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.

Middleness is the very enemy of the bold.

not only have children most certainly a right to their own ambitions, but their own lack of ambitions.

Throughout the entire history of philosophy, philosophers have sought to discover what man is - or what human nature is. But Sartre believed that man has no such eternal nature to fall back on. It is therefore useless to search for the meaning of life in general. We are condemned to improvise. We are like actors dragged onto the stage without having learned our lines, with no script and no prompter to whisper stage directions to us. We must decide for ourselves how to live.