Quotes from I, Robot

“It is the obvious which is so difficult to see most of the time. People say 'It's as plain as the nose on your face.' But how much of the nose on your face can you see, unless someone holds a mirror up to you?”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“The Three Laws of Robotics:

1: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm;

2: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law;

3: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law;

The Zeroth Law: A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason---if you pick the proper postulates.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“Fifty years," I hackneyed, "is a long time."
"Not when you're looking back at them," she said. "You wonder how they vanished so quickly.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“Every period of human development has had its own particular type of human conflict---its own variety of problem that, apparently, could be settled only by force. And each time, frustratingly enough, force never really settled the problem. Instead, it persisted through a series of conflicts, then vanished of itself---what's the expression---ah, yes, 'not with a bang, but a whimper,' as the economic and social environment changed. And then, new problems, and a new series of wars.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“It's your fiction that interests me. Your studies of the interplay of human motives and emotion.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“Postulates are based on assumption and adhered to by faith. Nothing in the Universe can shake them.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“... you just can't differentiate between a robot and the very best of humans.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“All normal life, Peter, consciously or otherwise, resent domination. If the domination is by an inferior, or by a supposed inferior, the resentment becomes stronger.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“There is nothing so eternally adhesive as the memory of power.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“You are the only one responsible for your own wants.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“I, on the other hand, am a finished product. I absorb electrical energy directly and utilize it with an almost one hundred percent efficiency. I am composed of strong metal, am continuously conscious, and can stand extremes of environment easily. These are facts which, with the self-evident proposition that no being can create another being superior to itself, smashes your silly hypothesis to nothing.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“The Master created humans first as the lowest type, most easily formed. Gradually, he replaced them by robots, the next higher step, and finally he created me, to take the place of the last humans.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“There is no Master but the Master,” he said, “and QT-1 is his prophet.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“They recognize the Master, now that I have preached Truth to them. All the robots do.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“It is always useful, you see, to subject the past life of reform politicians to rather inquisitive research.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“People say 'It's as plain as the noise on your face.' But how much of the nose on your face can you see, unless someone hold a mirror up to you?”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“You’ll have such proof as exists. You are the only one responsible for your own wants.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“These are facts which, with the self-evident proposition that no being can create another being superior to itself, smashes your silly hypothesis to nothing.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“Oh, hell! I can’t sleep!” “Neither can I! But I might as well try—as a matter of principle.”   Twelve hours later, sleep was still just that—a matter of principle, unattainable in practice.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“First of Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics:
A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“And his idea of solid comfort was to be left in utter solitude for two or three hours.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“Cada período del desarrollo humano, Susan, tiene su tipo particular de conflicto, sus problemas distintos que, aparentemente sólo pueden resolverse por la fuerza. Y jamás, por decepcionante que esto sea, la fuerza resuelve el problema. En su lugar, éste persiste a través de una serie de conflictos y se desvanece por sí solo... ¿cómo dice la frase?, no con un estallido, sino con su susurro, a medida que el ambiente económico y social cambia. Y entonces, nuevo problema y nueva serie de guerras. Un ciclo, al parecer, sin fin.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“The first step in cooking rabbit stew is catching the rabbit.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“Isaac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics"

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey 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.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“-La humanidad ha perdido todo control sobre su futuro
-No lo ha tenido jamás, en realidad.Estuvo siempre a merced de unas fuerzas económicas y sociológicas que no entendía, de los caprichos del clima y de los azares de la guerra.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“The unwritten motto of United States Robot and Mechanical Men Corp. was well-known: “No employee makes the same mistake twice. He is fired the first time.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“George Weston, after all was only a man—poor thing—and his wife made full use of every device which a clumsier and more scrupulous sex has learned, with reason and futility, to fear.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“Al parecer, cree más en la curación que en el castigo de los criminales. Considero esto muy significativo.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

“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.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from I, Robot

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Popular quotes

“You never go away from us, yet we have difficulty in returning to You. Come, Lord, stir us up and call us back. Kindle and seize us. Be our fire and our sweetness. Let us love. Let us run.”
― Augustine of Hippo, quote from Confessions

“During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was--but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasureable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me--upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain--upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant eye-like windows--upon a few rank sedges--and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees--with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium--the bitter lapse into everyday life--the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart--an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales

“The four elements: earth, water, fire and air; the qualities recognized by touch: cold, heat, dryness, and moisture; the temperaments: sanguineous, phlegmatic, choleric, and saturnine; the faculties: natural, animal, and vital.”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“تأمل كلمة تشير إلى شيء، “المظلة” على سبيل المثال، وعندما أقول كلمة “مظلة” فإنك ترى الشيء في ذهنك، ترى نوعاً من العصيّ، وقوائم معدنية من النوع الذي يطوى في أعلاها تشكّل هيكلاً يحمل قماشاً لا ينفذ منه الماء ولا يلتصق به، وعندما يفتح فإنه يحميك من المطر. وهذه الجزئية الأخيرة مهمّة، فالشمسية ليست مجرد شيء، وإنما هي شيء يؤدي وظيفة، وبتعبير آخر يعبّر عن إرادة الإنسان. وعندما تتمهل لتتأمل الأمر فإنك تجد أنّ كل شيء مماثل للمظلة، من حيث أنه يؤدي وظيفة، فالقلم للكتابة، والحذاء للانتعال، والسيارة للانتقال. والآن، السؤال الذي أطرحه هو ما يلي: ماذا يحدث عندما يكفّ شيء عن أداء وظيفته؟ أهو ما يزال الشيء أم أنه غدا شيئاً آخر؟ عندما تنزع القماش عن المظلة هل ما تزال المظلة مظلة؟ إنك تفتح القوائم المعدنية، وترفعها فوق رأسك وتمضي في المطر، وتبتلّ حتى النخاع. هل من الممكن الاستمرار في تسمية هذا الشيء بالمظلة؟ إنّ الناس يقومون بهذا بصفة عامة. وعند الحد الأقصى سيقولون إن المظلة قد كسرت. وبالنسبة إليّ فإن هذا خطأ خطير، ومصدر كل المشكلات، فالشمسية لأنها لم تعد تستطيع أداء وظيفتها كفّت عن أن تكون مظلة، ربما كانت كذلك في وقت من الأوقات، ولكنها الآن تغيرت إلى شيء آخر. غير أنّ الكلمة بقيت على حالها، ومن ثمّ فإنها لم تعد تستطيع التعبير عن الشيء، إنها غير دقيقة، إنها زائفة، وهي تخفي الشيء الذي يفترض أن تكشف عنه. وإذا لم يكن بمقدورنا تسمية أداة عادية تنتمي للحياة اليومية شيئاً نمسكه في أيدينا، فكيف يمكن أن نتوقع الحديث عن أشياء تهمّنا بصورة حقيقية؟ وما لم يكن بمقدورنا البدء في تجسيد مفهوم التغيّر في الكلمات التي نستخدمها فإننا سنواصل الضياع .”
― Paul Auster, quote from The New York Trilogy

“I never felt right being alone; sometimes it felt good but it never felt right.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Women

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