The Robots of Dawn

People who don't expect justice don't have to suffer disappointment.

The robot had no feelings, only positronic surges that mimicked those feelings. (And perhaps human beings had no feelings, only neuronic surges that were interpreted as feelings.)

A knotty puzzle may hold a scientist up for a century, when it may be that a colleague has the solution already and is not even aware of the puzzle that it might solve.

Meaning well is a poor defense,

Are there Laws of Humanics as there are Laws of Robotics? How many Laws of Humanics might there be and how can they be expressed mathematically? I don’t know. “Perhaps, though, there may come a day when someone will work out the Laws of Humanics and then be able to predict the broad strokes of the future, and know what might be in store for humanity, instead of merely guessing as I do, and know what to do to make things better, instead of merely speculating. I dream sometimes of founding a mathematical science which I think of as ‘psychohistory,’ but I know I can’t and I fear no one ever will.

You may uncover more and, eventually, what seems altogether a mystery to us now may unfold and become plain.

I grow grandiose, which is a good sign I should become prosaic.

‘That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ Is that it, Daneel?” Daneel paused, then said, “I am not certain what is meant by the smell of a rose, but if a rose on Earth is the common flower that is called a rose on Aurora, and if by its ‘smell’ you mean a property that can be detected, sensed, or measured by human beings, then surely calling a rose by another sound-combination—and holding all else equal—would not affect the smell or any other of its intrinsic properties.

Here were the same long cold bare corridors, the same lowest common denominator of design and decoration, with every light source designed so as to irritate as few people as possible and to please just as few.

To Baley, it seemed not that the Aurorans were growing more humane in their attitude out of a liking for the humane, but that they were denying the robotic nature of the objects in order to remove the discomfort of having to recognize the fact that the human beings were dependent upon objects of artificial intelligence.

He would have to ask questions constantly, take nothing for granted. There would be so many opportunities to miss the obvious, so many chances to misunderstand, so many ways of taking the wrong path. 11