“Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know—and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know—even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction—than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.”

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.