I am not responsible for what other people think. I am responsible only for what I myself think, and I know what that is. No idea I've ever come up with has ever struck me as a divine revelation. Nothing I have ever observed leads me to think there is a God watching over me.
Interpretation
Personal thoughts and beliefs are one's own responsibility, independent of others' perceptions.
In this quote, Isaac Asimov emphasizes the importance of individual responsibility regarding one's thoughts and beliefs. He expresses a skeptic view toward divine oversight and suggests that personal conclusions should come from one's own experiences and reasoning rather than succumbing to societal expectations or perceptions.
In practice
During a philosophy class discussion, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of personal belief systems.
Democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies.
Science does not promise absolute truth, nor does it consider that such a thing necessarily exists. Science does not even promise that everything in the Universe is amenable to the scientific process.
Democracy cannot survive overpopulation.
Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.
A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.
During the century after Newton, it was still possible for a man of unusual attainments to master all fields of scientific knowledge. But by 1800, this had become entirely impracticable.
We all long for Eden, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most human, is still soaked with the sense of exile.
Eternity to the godly is a day that has no sunset; eternity to the wicked is a night that has no sunrise.
Reverence for life is more than solicitude or sensitivity for life. It is a sense of the whole, a capacity for inspired response, a respect for the intricate universe of individual life. It is the supreme awareness of awareness itself.
But Nature cast me for the part she found me best fitted for, and I have had to play it, and must play it till the curtain falls.
Though an atom is invisible, unthinkable, yet in it are the whole power and potency of the universe.
Man loves liberty, even if he does not know that he loves it. He is driven by it and flees from where it does not exist.
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