Quotes – Page 11

Only fear could ensure absolute loyality. That and nothing else.

They can't rule forever. No one can. They'll grow soft and lazy. They will become corrupt. But it may take centuries, because history doesn't hurry.

Don't think it's enough to replace one set of rulers by another.

All governments kill as part of the nature of things.

Observe the universe, young man. If you can't force amusement out of it, you might as well cut your throat, since there's dammed little good in it.

It is always very fashionable to assume that there are lost arts and lost sciences, and there are always these people who make a cult of primitivism and who make all sorts of ridiculous claims for the prehistoric civilizations on Earth.

The stars, like dust, encircle me

In living mists of light;

And all of space I seem to see

In one vast burst of sight.

It is asthonishing that a collection of statements that are individually true can be used, in combination, to yield an effect that the truth should not.

What have the barbarians to lose? They only live a few decades, in any case. Life means nothing to them.

The Three Laws of Robotics involve individual human beings and individual robots. You can point to any individual human being or to an individual robot. But what is your 'humanity' but an abstraction? Can you point to humanity?

There is a law that is greater than the First Law. A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

There are always emergencies when a government wishes to manufacture one - and in an emergency, rules can always be broken.