The Caves Of Steel Quotes
"At two pipefuls a day, he could stretch it to next quota day."
"The only way out is to find the murderer on our own and hand him over to the Spacers. It’s up to us."
"The City was the culmination of man’s mastery over the environment."
"It should not be necessary for citizens to require more than one officer of the law to direct what should be done."
"If, at this moment, two law men quarreled openly, it would mean the end of all chance for a peaceful solution."
"The most intricate creation of the human mind, were thrown from hand to hand like footballs and mashed to uselessness in a trifle of time."
"You are mistaken. What I hold is not a neuronic whip, nor is it a tickler. It is a blaster and very deadly."
"I will shoot the man or woman who touches me."
"Don’t you ever threaten a human being with a blaster again."
"I am incapable of hurting a human. But, as you see, I did not have to fire. I did not expect to have to."
"The division between human and robot is perhaps not as significant as that between intelligence and non-intelligence."
"It’s good to know the truth. I don’t want to be fooled by not knowing."
"It is difficult to accept a gross parody of the human form as an intellectual equal."
"Carbon is the basis of human life and iron of robot life."
"Walking would offer the least chance of detection."
"It is not the blind attack of a mob following the line of least resistance, but the organized attempt of a small group to strike, deliberately, at the unguarded point."
"Your opinions are, obviously, your own. But it made it necessary for us to check your psychological profile very closely. We know that, although you dislike R’s intensely, you will work with one if you conceive it to be your duty. You have an extraordinarily high loyalty aptitude and a respect for legitimate authority. It is what we need."
"A particularly strong drive has been inserted into my motivation banks; a desire for justice."
"Much of the earlier habits of Earthly society have been given up in the interests of that same economy and efficiency: space, privacy, even much of free will. They are the products of civilization, however, and not more than ten thousand years old."
"The adjustment of sleep to night, however, is as old as man: a million years. The habit is not easy to give up."
"Though no one can tell noon from midnight by any cosmic phenomenon along the enclosed avenues of the City, mankind follows the mute partitionings of the hour hand."
"The expressways empty, the noise of life sinks, the moving mob among the colossal alleys melts away; New York City lies in Earth’s unnoticed shadow, and its population sleeps."
"Civil Service doesn’t take men who are declassified for cause. Manual labor is the only thing I can do; the only thing you could do. Bentley would lose all inherited status. For God’s sake, Jessie, you don’t know what it’s like."
"I’m not angry. I’m scared; I’m scared clean to death."
"One by one, the various exit points from the City were investigated. Do you know how many there are, Elijah? Five hundred and two."
"It seemed as though no one even knew they existed. A man could have walked out of any of them at any time and returned at will. He would never have been detected."
"There’s more to imitating a robot than just putting on a frozen expression and adopting a stilted style of conversation. The trouble with you men of the Outer Worlds is that you’re too used to robots. You’ve gotten to accept them almost as human beings. You’ve grown blind to the differences."
"I didn’t want to have it on the record that a robot had threatened to blast men and women."
"The First Law of Robotics states that a robot cannot harm a human being."
"Justice, Elijah, is that which exists when all the laws are enforced."
"An unjust law," said R. Daneel evenly, "is a contradiction in terms."
"The Spacers want to be able to report a murder. They want riots. They want an assault on Spacetown."
"I am a robotics expert, and I assure you that the essence of the robot mind lies in a completely literal interpretation of the universe."
"Justice is a very concrete term to him since it is based on law enforcement, which is in turn based upon the existence of specific and definite laws."
"We are not here just to solve a murder, but to save Spacetown and with it, the future of the human race."
"Earthmen have colonized planets in the past. Over thirty of the fifty Outer Worlds, including my native Aurora, were directly colonized by Earthmen."
"The Outer Worlds became disease-free. Naturally, as time went on, entrance requirements for immigrant Earthmen were made more and more rigorous, since less and less could the Outer Worlds endure the possible introduction of disease."
"People don't believe it. Only it got to Jessie before it died."
"It's just a matter of humoring them and hoping they'll keep within reason in their notions."
"Letting an Earthman into an Outer World is like finding a diamond asteroid in the rings of Saturn."
"I am nuclear-powered. I had thought you were aware of that."
"My data store is drawn from that of the late Dr. Sarton."
"The greater the danger, the more the strip-runners have that most valuable of all prizes, honor in the eyes of their fellows."
"A policeman is always in a certain amount of danger."
"Gamma radiation destroys the delicate balance of a positronic brain."
"You are my partner, Elijah. It is well that you know my weaknesses and shortcomings."
"Among us, it is not customary for a man to send his young son into possible danger, even if it is logical to do so."
"Impossible is a hell of a strong word, Doctor."
"The human race, Mr. Baley, has a strong Frankenstein complex."
"I wasn’t expecting it. I never saw one like this. Outer World manufacture?"
"It’s easier to have robots imitate the human shape than to redesign radically the very philosophy of our tools."
"Our greatest resource is ingenuity and we’ll never run out of that, Lije."
"The thing you call falsification just doesn’t exist in the robot’s mental horizon."
"I can’t go on, Lije. I can’t. I can’t sleep or eat. I’ve got to tell you."
"Being sorry, I mean. I want to know about the meetings. In the first place, where were they held?"
"A sense of detachment was creeping over him, a numbing of emotions."
"It was a wonderful place to meet, though. We’d get together."
"Mostly, it was the fun of getting together and feeling important."
"It’s quite a trick, knowing which they are, though."
"It’s about all. And sing songs, sometimes. And of course, refreshments."
"I thought they would hurt you, Lije. For heaven’s sake, why do you act as though you don’t understand?"
"It is hard to explain. Jezebel is a rare name."
"We can’t ever build a robot that will be even as good as a human being in anything that counts, let alone better."
"What is beauty, or goodness, or art, or love, or God? We’re forever teetering on the brink of the unknowable, and trying to understand what can’t be understood. It’s what makes us men."
"I believe so, Elijah, provided it does not appear that I am hurting a human being by remaining silent."
"You will hurt me if you don’t. I assure you of that."
"The murder was arranged deliberately in order to throw suspicion on me."
"A robot must not hurt a human being, unless he can think of a way to prove it is for the human being’s ultimate good after all."
"We are here...to break the shell surrounding Earth and force its people into new expansion and colonization."
"We ourselves, rather than anything we tried to introduce, were the unsettling factor."
"Curiosity is the name we give to a desire to extend one’s knowledge."
"Aimless extension of knowledge...is merely inefficiency. I am designed to avoid inefficiency."
"What you say is correct. Today is not over. I had not thought of that, partner Elijah."