“In a properly automated and educated world, then, machines may prove to be the true humanizing influence. It may be that machines will do the work that makes life possible and that human beings will do all the other things that make life pleasant and worthwhile ”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Roboter-Visionen
“Feminine intuition? Is that what you wanted the robot for? You men. Faced with a woman reaching a correct conclusion and unable to accept the fact that she is your equal or superior in intelligence, you invent something called feminine intuition.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Roboter-Visionen
“After all, all devices have their dangers. The discovery of speech introduced communication—and lies. The discovery of fire introduced cooking—and arson. The discovery of the compass improved navigation—and destroyed civilizations in Mexico and Peru. The automobile is marvelously useful—and kills Americans by the tens of thousands each year. Medical advances have saved lives by the millions—and intensified the population explosion.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Roboter-Visionen
“Surely, if we take on thinking partners––or, at the least, thinking servants––in the form of machines, we will be more comfortable with them, and will relate to them more easily, if they are shaped like humans.
It will be easier to be friends with human-shaped robots than with specialized machines of unrecognizable shape. And I sometimes think that, in the desperate straits of humanity today, we would be grateful to have nonhuman friends, even if they are only the friends we build ourselves.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Roboter-Visionen
“She's qualified all right. She understands robots like a sister—comes from hating human beings so much, I think.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Roboter-Visionen
“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 for right and wrong.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Roboter-Visionen
“The day of the week on which the tour took place was known to all workers. All devices in its path ought to have been carefully neutralized or locked, since it was unreasonable to expect human beings to withstand the temptation to handle knobs, keys, handles and pushbuttons.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Roboter-Visionen
“Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics,” and here they are: 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.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Roboter-Visionen
“Postulates are based on assumption and adhered to by faith. Nothing in the Universe can shake them.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Roboter-Visionen
“Rabbi Loew of sixteenth-century Prague. He is supposed to have formed an artificial human being—a robot—out of clay, just as God had formed Adam out of clay. A clay object, however much it might resemble a human being, is “an unformed substance” (the Hebrew word for it is “golem”), since it lacks the attributes of life. Rabbi Loew, however, gave his golem the attributes of life by making use of the sacred name of God, and set the robot to work protecting the lives of Jews against their persecutors.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Roboter-Visionen
“Pero ya lo ve, no se pueden hacer diferencias entre un robot y el mejor de los humanos.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Roboter-Visionen
“It seems to me that only someone who wishes for freedom can be free. I wish for freedom.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Roboter-Visionen
Isaac Asimov
Born place: in Petrovichi, Russian Federation
Born date January 2, 1920
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“I say that is wine," Brett held up her glass. "We ought to toast something. 'Here's to royalty.'"
"This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. you don't want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. you lose the taste."
Brett's glass was empty.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from Fiesta
“We are social creatures; we will be miserable if we try to cut off contact with other people. Therefore, if what we seek is tranquility, we should form and maintain relations with others. In doing so, though, we should be careful about whom we befriend. We should also, to the extent possible, avoid people whose values are corrupt, for fear that their values will contaminate ours. •”
― William B. Irvine, quote from A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
“With a few of his colleagues, he built two sets of homes for laboratory rats. In the first home, they lived as they had in the original experiments, in solitary confinement, isolated except for their fix. But then he built a second home: a paradise for rats. Within its plywood walls,11 it contained everything a rat could want—there were wheels and colored balls and the best food, and other rats to hang out with and have sex with. He called it Rat Park.12 In these experiments, both sets of rats had access to a pair of drinking bottles. The first bottle contained only water. The other bottle contained morphine—an opiate that rats process in a similar way to humans and that behaves just like heroin when it enters their brains. At the end of each day, Bruce or a member of his team would weigh the bottles to see how much the rats had chosen to take opiates, and how much they had chosen to stay sober. What they discovered was startling. It turned out that the rats in isolated cages used up to 25 milligrams of morphine a day, as in the earlier experiments. But the rats in the happy cages used hardly any morphine at all—less than 5 milligrams. “These guys [in Rat Park] have a complete total twenty-four-hour supply” of morphine, Bruce said, “and they don’t use it.” They don’t kill themselves. They choose to spend their lives doing other things. So”
― Johann Hari, quote from Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs
“Good story' means something worth telling that the world wants to hear. Finding this is your lonely task...But the love of a good story, of terrific characters and a world driven by your passion, courage, and creative gifts is still not enough. Your goal must be a good story well told.”
― Robert McKee, quote from Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting
“People can't anticipate how much they'll miss the natural world until they are deprived of it. I have read about submarine crewmen who haunt the sonar room, listening to whale songs and colonies of snapping shrimp. Submarine captains dispense 'periscope liberty'- a chance to gaze at clouds and birds and coastlines and remind themselves that the natural world still exists. I once met a man who told me that after landing in Christchurch, New Zealand, after a winter at the South Pole research station, he and his companions spent a couple days just wandering around staring in awe at flowers and trees. At one point, one of them spotted a woman pushing a stroller. 'A baby!' he shouted, and they all rushed across the street to see. The woman turned the stroller and ran.”
― Mary Roach, quote from Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void
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The Stone SkyBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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