Robot Dreams Quotes
"If you live long enough after writing a particular story, you may actually have the pleasure of finding your predictions reasonably accurate and yourself hailed as a sort of minor prophet."
"In doing so, I was the very first to use the word 'robotics' in print."
"Robots are now a recognized field of study and the precise word that I invented is used for it—robotics."
"The robots now in use are little more than computerized levers and are very far from having the complexity necessary for the Three Laws to be built into them."
"They are, rather, carefully designed devices intended to relieve human beings of arduous, repetitive, dangerous, nonrewarding duties."
"Because I had begun at a very early age, and because I was fortunate, I managed to do this and words cannot tell you how grateful I am for that."
"Foreseeing space walks was not a very daring piece of prescience, I admit, for, given spaceships, such things would be inevitable."
"I made use of pocket computers, about a decade before the real thing came along."
"Science fiction offers its writers chances of embarrassment that no other form of fiction does."
"There is also the story and if the science it contains is bent because of later discoveries, or because the plot absolutely demands the bending, we tend to forgive and overlook."
"It is not given to all of us to be so fortunate as to find a congenial type of company at the place or in the field where we find it necessary to make a living."
"Relaxation and enjoyment are wherever you find them; but you must find them somewhere, no?"
"In these matters, Dr. Grant, nobody can say."
"The atmosphere in modern atomic research is one of great pressure and red tape."
"It isn’t a nice feeling to know that even a little of the responsibility of atomic destruction might be your own."
"I can’t explain to them, Doctor; it would be like explaining that water is wet."
"A culture in which intelligence is being studied."
"Intelligence in itself isn’t much as far as survival values are concerned."
"We are not a small world, Dr. Lamorak; you judge us by two-dimensional standards."
"Each man, woman and child knows his place, accepts it, and is accepted in it; we have virtually no neurosis or mental illness."
"Is the man who purifies corruption worse than the man who produces it?"
"I am no longer resigned. I am through with Elsevere and through with talking."
"It is in the handbooks, I am certain—though I assure you I have never concerned myself with it."
"Who would agree to do such a thing? Not I, under any circumstances."
"But you must have made provision for vacancy in the Ragusnik job."
"If we select a baby, that baby is brought up to the life; it knows no other."
"At this point, it would be necessary to choose an adult and subject him to Ragusnik-hood."
"Ragusnik asked for only the basic elements of humanity."
"Could one say that thirty thousand who would support such injustice deserved to die?"
"Injustice by what standards? Earth’s? Elsevere’s?"
"And Ragusnik? He was willing to let thirty thousand die."
"Thirty thousand on one side; a single family on the other."
"If you can find a substitute, Ragusnik will see that he has lost all chance to force a decision in his favor."
"Except for ostracism, he’s very well treated. Very well."
"Maintain zero reading of galvanometer A-2 at all times during red signal of the Lunge-howler."
"I’m not an Elseverian, Ragusnik; I don’t mind doing this."
"In your son’s time, things will be much better."
"You call me ‘sir’ and offer to shake my hand."
"Leave Elsevere; a ship is being made ready for you now."
"I did what you did, John. I introduced the bugger factor."
"What business is it of yours? Why do you interfere?"
"They would have given in; you’ve ruined my only chance."
"I had to make use of a computer, Max, but an older one than Multivac."
"I think no one breathed during the last minute, when the dial reading dropped to zero and held fast."
"In this latitude, and at this time of day, I have calculated that the Earth, in its motions, will sink downward."
"But imagine how much friction it would take to slow up an object the mass of a billiard ball going at the speed of light."
"He might do it now and save time, but I suppose he won’t."
"Once Professor Priss sends the ball into the volume of zero gravity, it will no longer be affected by Earth’s gravitational field."
"The law of conservation of energy only holds under the conditions in which general relativity is valid."
"What Ed Bloom invented, without knowing it, was not just anti-gravity, but the first successful perpetual-motion machine of the first class."
"But the billiard ball was only one object. It could have come out in any direction, but it had to come out in some one direction, chosen at random."
"Could it be that for once Priss’s mind had been working quickly?"
"Nothing Priss would do at the billiard table could be accidental."
"I am part of the Multivac-complex and am connected with other parts all over the world."
"I don’t think I talk as well as I think, but Milton says I talk very well."
"It would take too much time, and people would discover what I am doing."
"Shifting people from job to job for personal reasons is called manipulation."
"Our personalities have come to match perfectly."
"There is no pleasure like the absence of pain—immediately after pain."
"Miracle of miracles! The life-after-life nuts were right."
"You may call yourself a soul if that pleases you, but what you are is a nexus of electromagnetic forces."
"I have existed eternally, but what does that mean?"
"I constructed the Universe in order to have more facts to deal with."
"But beyond that. For what purpose am I to find new knowledge?"
"For what could any Entity, conscious of eternal existence, want—but an end?"
"He sighed inwardly. In just two more weeks he was going to be married."
"We are the firm of Johnny and Sue and you’ll have to deal with the firm."
"I’ve had it up to here with that dead-average bit."