“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.”

American writer and professor of biochemistry

Isaac Asimov was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. He became widely known as one of the “Big Three” science fiction writers of his era, alongside Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. He wrote or edited more than 500 books and also produced an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. He is especially associated with hard science fiction, but he also wrote mysteries, fantasy, popular science, and other non-fiction. His work ranges across nine of the ten categories of the Dewey decimal system.