Isaac Asimov was a very prominent American writer, a professor of biochemistry at Boston University, and President of the American Humanist Association from 1985 until his death in 1992.

Although he was the author of over hundreds of books, he is notably remembered for having written The Foundation Trilogy (a must read for sci-fi fans), and for his Three Laws of Robotics.

Here are 10 of my favorite Isaac Asimov quotes (not in any particular order).

1. “Any increase in knowledge anywhere helps pave the way for an increase in knowledge everywhere.”
2. “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny…’”
3. “They won’t listen. Do you know why? Because they have certain fixed notions about the past. Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don’t want the truth; they want their traditions.”
4. “Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.”
5. “Humanists recognize that it is only when people feel free to think for themselves, using reason as their guide, that they are best capable of developing values that succeed in satisfying human needs and serving human interests.”
6. “Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.”
7. “Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.”
8. “It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.”
9. “Where any answer is possible, all answers are meaningless.”
10. “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge’.”

If you haven’t read them already, I’d highly recommend his short story The Last Question (1956), as well as The Foundation Trilogy, which includes Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953).

Kurt Vonnegut, another of my favorite authors, was the Honorary President of the American Humanist Association from 1992 until his death in 2007. He once spoke at a memorial service for Isaac Asimov, and I very much enjoy what he had to say,

“Do you know what a Humanist is? I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that functionless capacity. We Humanists try to behave well without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. We serve as best we can the only abstraction with which we have any real familiarity, which is our community. We had a memorial services for Isaac a few years back, and at one point I said, “Isaac is up in Heaven now.” It was the funniest thing I could have said to a group of Humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. It was several minutes before order could be restored. And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, “Kurt is up in Heaven now.” That’s my favorite joke.”

Now 26 years to the day after Asimov’s death, and just about 11 years after Vonnegut’s — may they both be enjoying Heaven now.

This post originally appeared on Medium, here.