Robot Visions Quotes
"A robot is infinitely more to be trusted than a human nursemaid."
"He just can’t help being faithful and loving and kind. He’s a machine-made so."
"Robbie was constructed for only one purpose really — to be the companion of a little child."
"He was not no machine! He was a person just like you and me and he was my friend."
"Mercury had long been the jinx world of the System."
"The only thing that could save them was selenium."
"Living anything down — or even just plain living — will be out of the question."
"Ten years is a long time as far as robot-types are concerned."
"All normal life, Peter, consciously or otherwise, resents domination. If the domination is by an inferior, or by a supposed inferior, the resentment becomes stronger."
"All work on the Hyperatomic Drive through all the space volume occupied by the Stations of the Twenty-Seventh Asteroidal Grouping came to a halt."
"The First Law states — I’ll quote it — ‘No robot may harm a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.’"
"No disciplinary action is intended, I am sure."
"If we can’t determine the modified Nestor by some gross difference that we can see with the naked eye, one that there is no mistake about, we’re out of luck."
"The danger of being wrong, and of letting him escape is otherwise too great."
"It’s not enough to point out a minute irregularity in a graph."
"The only way a ‘wrong datum’ can be forced on the Machine is to include it as part of a self-consistent whole, all of which is subtly wrong in a manner either too delicate for the Machine to detect or outside the Machine’s experience."
"But the Machines work not for any single human being, but for all humanity, so that the First Law becomes: ‘No Machine may harm humanity; or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.’"
"The real point of the matter is that what we call a ‘wrong datum’ is one which is inconsistent with all other known data. It is our only criterion of right and wrong."
"And so they are quietly taking care of the only elements left that threaten them. It is not the ‘Society for Humanity’ which is shaking the boat so that the Machines may be destroyed."
"Every action by any executive which does not follow the exact directions of the Machine he is working with becomes part of the data for the next problem."
"We just publicize the robot as Jane-1 and we don’t have to say another word. We’re safe."
"The Machine is shaking the boat—very slightly—just enough to shake loose those few which cling to the side for purposes the Machines consider harmful to Humanity."
"It might well help us gain enormous insight into astronomical detail and make the whole thing worthwhile even if we don’t make the Space Jump at all."
"It’s not an easy problem, judging how to program a robot to tell a significant correlation when you don’t know what correlations she will be making."
"The task of the human brain remains what it has always been, that of discovering new data to be analyzed, and of devising new concepts to be tested."
"You can’t just have it spew out everything. The point is to have it recognize the crucial correlation and draw the conclusion."
"It seems to me that if you had a robot like that, you would have her do routinely what, among human beings, only the occasional genius is capable of doing."
"What are words? I’m trying to get a robot with the capacity to make random correlations at enormous speeds."
"What’s the best significance you have, Jane?"
"She’s doing the equivalent of setting up equations with indeterminate solutions."
"I want Jane to watch them at work; I want her to see their instruments, their offices, their desks, everything about them that she can."
"Jane isn’t the ordinary logical robot; she’s intuitive."
"It was an inspiration. Sheer genius, I tell you."
"After she had received everything in the place and most of it twice and three times over and never said a word that sounded like anything."
"If we knew, we wouldn’t need her at all, would we?"
"A robot makes no distinction. To a robot, all men are truly equal."
"How can I be sure?...Call it feminine intuition."
"Let he who has never made an error in the fearsomely intricate mathematics of the positronic brain fill out the first memo of correction."
"Rodney isn’t a freezer or a sterilizer. He’s a person."
"Sometimes I wonder about getting one of those slick, modern jobs."
"You mean you still don’t have a robotized kitchen, grandfather?"
"I’m sure he can pour and mix and heat and do whatever else is necessary."
"I’m not going to interfere with his programming. It will make him less efficient."
"Madam, there is nothing in my programming or in my instructions that would make it mandatory for me to accept orders given me by another robot."
"Actually, Hortense, this means you can be creative and make your own arrangement."
"Anyone can be nasty, but to be unfailingly creative in one’s nastiness filled me with a perverse desire to applaud now and then."
"A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm."
"A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law."
"A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law."
"If a man has the right to give a robot any order that does not involve harm to a human being, he should have the decency never to give a robot any order that involves harm to a robot, unless human safety absolutely requires it."
"With great power goes great responsibility, and if the robots have Three Laws to protect men, is it too much to ask that men have a law or two to protect robots?"
"A human being may not injure another human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm."
"A human being must give orders to a robot that preserve robotic existence, unless such orders cause harm or discomfort to human beings."
"A human being must not harm a robot, or, through inaction, allow a robot to come to harm, unless such harm is needed to keep a human being from harm or to allow a vital order to be carried out."
"We cannot design human brains as we design robot brains."
"It is, however, a beginning, and I honestly think that if we are to have power over intelligent robots, we must feel a corresponding responsibility for them."
"A robot must give up its existence if that is the only way it can avoid doing harm to a human being or can prevent harm from coming to a human being."
"It is my feeling, to put it as succinctly as possible, that the one necessary ingredient in every successful joke is a sudden alteration in point of view."
"You are, after all—at least to most people—what you seem to be."