I, Robot Quotes

“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, I, Robot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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