I’ve been an Asimov fan since I was eight, but every so often one of his lines hits me harder as an adult than it ever did when I first read it in college. Lately, this one has been echoing in my head:
“Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people… who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.”
When I first read that, I took it as classic Asimov; sharp, a little dramatic, aimed at the creationism debates of his time. But rereading it now, it feels less like a historical complaint and more like a description of a pattern that keeps resurfacing.
Back then, Asimov was warning about people who rejected evidence while trying to control what others could learn. Today, we’re still watching groups dismiss entire fields of knowledge, undermine scientific literacy, and try to reshape education around belief instead of understanding. The details change, but the dynamic is the same: those who refuse to engage with evidence often feel the strongest urge to dictate it.
What hits me now is how much Asimov cared about the process of learning; the slow, careful accumulation of knowledge across generations. His frustration wasn’t aimed at disagreement; it was aimed at the attempt to replace inquiry with certainty, curiosity with dogma.
Reading this again decades later, I don’t just see a writer venting. I see someone defending the idea that knowledge matters, that thinking matters, and that society can’t function when anti‑intellectualism demands the steering wheel.
And honestly, I feel that more now than I ever did at twenty-one.
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