Now the main source of capital is how many “robots”, programmers, and machines you have working for you. Those are the ultimate force multipliers.

When you are thirteen, you spend all your time imagining what it would be like to live in a world where you could pay a robot for sex. And that sex would cost a dollar....

Over the road there was a church: a modern gray building, which constantly played a recording of church bells. Strange it was. Why no proper bells? I never went in but I bet it was...

It is not enough to live together in peace, with one race on its knees.

..I find it incredible impossible not to cry when I hear Stevie Nicks’s “Landslide,” especially the lyric: “I’ve been afraid of changing, because I’ve built my life around you.” I think a good test to...

A mind is a simulation that simulates itself.

Mr. Smith yelled at the doctor,What have you done to my boy?He’s not flesh and blood,he’s aluminum alloy!”The doctor said gently,What I’m going to saywill sound pretty wild.But you’re not the father of this strange...

Through the Mud (from the book Blue Bridge)A line of robots,We approach a wall of mud,Some of us carrying flowers.The others laughBit when we enter that wallIt is the flowersThat will make us an arkTo...

Explosions and fighting robots and shit. What’s that got to do with the heart?

We will not have humanoid androids. It’s interesting: when you start trying to make robots look more human, you end up making them look more grotesque. It takes very little to go from super-attractive robot...

Father never approved of my toysSaw them as child’s playthingsI was a childThey were my worldI ruled thereAnd he stepped on themDestroying themAnd in turnDestroyed meI should have been left to playNow I must step...

Robots make better lovers.

Whether we are based on carbon or on silicon makes no fundamental difference; we should each be treated with appropriate respect.

Dr Gall: Hoši, je to zločin staré Evropy, že naučila Roboty válčit! Nemohli už dát, u čerta, pokoj s tou svou politikou? To byl zločin, udělat z živé práce vojáky!Alquist: Zločin byl vyrábět Roboty!Domin: Cože?Alquist:...

I have the shape of a human being and organs equivalent to those of a human being. My organs, in fact, are identical to some of those in a prosthetized human being. I have contributed...

Not books.

To my surprise, the sensation of query filled my stomach, spreading through to every corner. This was followed by each point of query ending at the same answer. Device Nineteen had responded to the question...

But do not take this responsibility lightly, my boy. The Gauntlet casts an ominous shadow.

When mankind ascended to the stars, he came no closer to God.

Fortran”. [M]ankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that...

I’m sure that they’ll be able to realize how wrong it all is… even though the idiots outnumber most people these days, there are still enough intelligent people to fight against it.

Will robot teachers replace human teachers? No, but they can complement them. Moreover, the could be sufficient in situations where there is no alternative––to enable learning while traveling, or while in remote locations, or when...

Narsh!

Robots are important also. If I don my pure-scientist hat, I would say just send robots; I’ll stay down here and get the data. But nobody’s ever given a parade for a robot. Nobody’s ever...

She’s qualified all right. She understands robots like a sister—comes from hating human beings so much, I think.

Human social life, I suggest, is the magma that erupts and builds up, so to speak, at the fault lines where natural human capacities meet and grind against and over natural human limitations…. This meeting...

What separates us into engineers and robots, puppeteers and puppets, kings and pawns, is not the status we hold at any given time among others – status is irrelevant; it is the level of ever-present...

If everyone followed the rules, we wouldn’t be human…And I’d choose that than being a Robot over any day.

And Elvex said, “I was the man.” – In “Robot dreams” (Short story)

Press button woman was there for himFor whatever he was wanting.No demand was too bigPress button woman knew her gig.

Uh, what?

There are three things that robots cannot do,” wrote Maxon. Then beneath that on the page he wrote three dots, indented. Beside the first dot he wrote “Show preference without reason (LOVE)” and then “Doubt...

Aimless extension of knowledge, however, which is what I think you really mean by the term curiosity, is merely inefficiency. I am designed to avoid inefficiency.

I can almost see the processes whirrling clunkily in his singularix, as his excited nervous system battled with his logic circuits.

If you don’t want a generation of robots, fund the arts!

Humans were still not only the cheapest robots around, but also, for many tasks, the only robots that could do the job. They were self-reproducing robots too. They showed up and worked generation after generation;...

Another principle that I believe can be justified by scientific evidence so far is that nobody is going to emigrate from this planet not ever….It will be far cheaper, and entail no risk to human...

Unfortunately robots capable of manufacturing robots do not exist. That would be the philosopher’s stone, the squaring of the circle.

Annette sighs. Manfred’s been upgrading this robot cat for years, and his ex-wife Pamela used to mess with its neural configuration, too: This is its third body, and it’s getting more realistically uncooperative with every...

Oh, people get used to so many things,” said Vadesh, “if only they give them selves a chance.

Don’t blame you,” said Marvin and counted five hundred and ninety-seven thousand million sheep before falling asleep again a second later.

Let us remember that the automatic machine is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic consequences of slave labor.

It takes courage and strength to be sensitive to things and even more strength and courage to own up to it or be vocal about it. Robots, the only things with a perfect lack of...

Why give a robot an order to obey orders—why aren’t the original orders enough? Why command a robot not to do harm—wouldn’t it be easier never to command it to do harm in the first...

Some years ago, there was a lovely philosopher of science and journalist in Italy named Giulio Giorello, and he did an interview with me. And I don’t know if he wrote it or not, but...

My relationship with him was defined by these complex emotions, this mixture of gratitude and resentment.