The Naked Sun Quotes

“Civilizations have always been pyramidal in structure. As one climbs toward the apex of the social edifice, there is increased leisure and increasing opportunity to pursue hapiness. As one climbs, one finds also fewer and fewer people to enjoy this more and more. Invariably, there is a preponderance of the dispossessed. And remember this, no matter how well off the bottom layers of the pyramid might be on an absolute scale, they are always dispossessed in comparison with the apex.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“Victories over ingrained patterns of thought are not won in a day or a year.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“The Solarians have given up something mankind has had for a million years; something worth more than atomic power, cities, agriculture, tools, fire, everything; because it's something that made everything possible (...) The tribe, sir. Cooperation between individuals.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“But he no longer feared the fear! It was not something to run from, that fear, but something to fight.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“Mr Baley", said Quemot, "you can't treat human emotions as though they were built about a positronic brain".

"I'm not saying you can. Robotics is a deductive science and sociology an inductive one. But mathematics can be made to apply in either case.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“Logical but not reasonable. Wasn't that the definition of a robot?”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“Baley’s lips twitched. He had guessed that in some ways robotic logic must fall short and he was convinced of it now. As the roboticist had said: Logical but not reasonable.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“It is as much my job to prevent harm to mankind as a whole as yours is to prevent harm to man as an individual.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“What was the first thing a man must do before he can be a man? He must be born. He must leave the womb; and once left, it could not be re-entered.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“Balcy had left the City and could not re-enter. The City was
no longer his; the Caves of Steel were alien. This had to be; and
it would be so for others and Earth would be bom again and reach
outwards.

His heart beat madly and the noise of life about him sank to an
unheard murmur.

He remembered his dream on Solaria and he understood it at
last. He lifted his head and he could see through all the steel and
concrete and humanity above him. He could see the beacon set in
space to lure men outwards. He could see it shining down — the
naked sun.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“If a robot can be manipulated into doing harm to a man, it means only that we must extend the powers of the positronic brain. One might say we ought to make the human better. That is impossible, so we will make the robot more foolproof.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“You wash your hands, don't you?"

Bayley's eyes dropped to his hands. They were as clean as need be. "Yes," he said.

"All right. I suppose it's a measure of instability to feel such revulsion at dirty hands as to be unable to clean an oily mechanism by hand even in a emergency. Still, in the ordinary course of living, the revulsion keeps you clean, which is good.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“Without the interplay of human against human, the chief interest in life is gone; most of the intellectual values are gone; most of the reason for living is gone.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“Anything could be found in figures if the search were long enough and hard enough and if the proper pieces of information were ignored or overlooked.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“On Earth, we have a continuous influx of young people who are willing to change because they haven't had time to grow hard set in their ways. I suppose there's some optimum. A life long enough for real accomplishment and short enough to make way for youth at a rate that's not too slow.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“Baley tried to picture a world as a sphere being lit and unlit as it turned. He found it hard to do and felt scornful of the so-superior Spacers who let such an essential thing as time be dictated to them by the vagaries of planetary movements.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“Baley distrusted overstatement and had no liking for the armchair deducer who discovered certainty rather than probability in the workings of logic.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“You lack the capacity to decipher this particular puzzle.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“No? Then listen to this. It is my belief that throughout the history of the positronic robot, the First Law of Robotics has been deliberately misquoted.” Leebig moved spasmodically. “Misquoted? Fool! Madman! Why?” “To hide the fact,” said Baley with complete composure, “that robots can commit murder.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“Well, not the stuff they use in robotics, which I wouldn’t follow, but sociological relationships I can handle. For instance, I’m familiar with the Teramin Relationship.” “The what, sir?” “Maybe you have a different name for it. The differential of inconveniences suffered with privileges granted: dee eye sub jay taken to the nth——” “What are you talking about?”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“The action of social revolution and the reaction of guarding against such revolution or combating it once it has begun are the causes of a great deal of the human misery with which history is permeated.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“Ah, the future good!” Leebig’s eyes glowed with passion and he seemed to grow less conscious of his listener and correspondingly more talkative. “A simple concept, you think. How many human beings are willing to accept a trifling inconvenience for the sake of a large future good? How long does it take to train a child that what tastes good now means a stomach-ache later, and what tastes bad now will correct the stomach-ache later? Yet you want a robot to be able to understand?”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“A man without weaknesses serves only to make everyone else conscious of his own imperfections. A primitive poet named Tennyson once wrote: ‘He is all fault who has no fault at all.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“A man without weaknesses serves only to make everyone else conscious of his own imperfections. A primitive poet named Tennyson once wrote: ‘He is all fault who has no fault at all.’ ”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“It is my belief that throughout the history of the positronic robot, the First Law of Robotics has been deliberately misquoted.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“January 1950, Doubleday published my first book, the science-fiction novel Pebble in the Sky, and I was hard at work on a second novel.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“Culture dictates invention”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“And it was the amount of energy a single human could produce that dictated military potential, standard of living, happiness, and all besides.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“Quand les gens sont malheureux et perdent tout espoir de voir venir la fin de leurs tourments, ils passent aisément de l’amertume, née de la spoliation, à la fureur vengeresse et destructrice. Il ne faut alors que quelques minutes pour transformer l’hostilité latente d’une foule en une fulgurante orgie de sang et de ruines.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“A robot, the man had said, is logical but not reasonable.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun