The Caves of Steel (Robot, #1)

by Isaac Asimov

Efficiency had been forced on Earth with increasing population. Two billion people, three billion, even five billion could be supported by the planet by progressive lowering of the standard of living. When the population reaches eight billion, however, semistarvation becomes too much like the real thing.

Each City became a semiautonomous unit, economically all but self-sufficient. It could roof itself in, gird itself about, burrow itself under. It became a steel cave, a tremendous, self-contained cave of steel and concrete.

It is difficult to accept a gross parody of the human form as an intellectual equal. Can your factories do no better?” “I’m sure they can, Daneel. I think we just prefer to know when we’re dealing with a robot and when we’re not.”

“Better your own road to hell than another’s road to heaven, eh? I know how you must feel. It is not pleasant to listen to the preaching of a stranger.

people sometimes mistake their own shortcomings for those of society and want to fix the Cities because they don’t know how to fix themselves.”

We’re forever teetering on the brink of the unknowable, and trying to understand what can’t be understood. It’s what makes us men.

the destruction of what should not be, that is, the destruction of what you people call evil, is less just and desirable than the conversion of this evil into what you call good.”