“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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“Apologies aren't something you want to get in the habit of practicing in the mirror”
― Jonathan Lethem, quote from Gun, With Occasional Music
“We Danes have always been charitable in our trading operations with Iceland. And when our deceased Highness monopolized trade with the island it was only in order to prevent outsiders from extorting those pitiable people.” As”
― Halldór Kiljan Laxness, quote from Iceland's Bell
“And at the last all shall be safe, and evil thrust out never to return. And so that the trust be kept, he said, I give it into your charge, and your sons', and your sons' sons, until the day come.”
― Susan Cooper, quote from Over Sea, Under Stone
“Being nearly four years old, she was certainly a child: and children are human (if one allows the term "human" a wide sense): but she had not altogether ceased to be a baby: and babies are of course not human--they are animals, and have a very ancient and ramified culture, as cats have, and fishes, and even snakes: the same in kind as these, but much more complicated and vivid, since babies are, after all, one of the most developed species of the lower vertebrates.
In short, babies have minds which work in terms and categories of their own which cannot be translated into the terms and categories of the human mind.
It is true that they look human--but not so human, to be quite fair, as many monkeys.
Subconsciously, too, every one recognizes they are animals--why else do people always laugh when a baby does some action resembling the human, as they would at a praying mantis? If the baby was only a less-developed man, there would be nothing funny in it, surely.”
― Richard Hughes, quote from A High Wind in Jamaica
“What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?...Was ever anything so civil?”
― Anthony Trollope, quote from The Warden
Ruin and Rising
Hawksong
Maybe Someday
Kushiel's Avatar
Finnegans Wake
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