The Caves of Steel

It was the addition of status that brought the little things: a more comfortable seat here, a better cut of meat there, a shorter wait in line at the other place. To the philosophical mind, these items might seem scarcely worth any great trouble to acquire.

Yet no one, however philosophical, could give up those privileges, once acquired, without a pang. That was the point.

“Logically, developing children are carefully screened for physical and mental defects before being allowed to mature.”

Baley interrupted. “You mean you kill them if they don’t—”

“If they don’t measure up. Quite painlessly, I assure you. The notion shocks you, just as the Earthman’s uncontrolled breeding shocks us.”

Men grew desperate and the border between bitter frustration and wild destruction is sometimes easily crossed.

I tell you I know the type of people that become Medievalists. They’re soft, dreamy people who find life too hard for them here and get lost in an ideal world of the past that never really existed.

There are degrees of justice, Elijah. When the lesser is incompatible with the greater, the lesser must give way.

Remember, you once said, Lije, that 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.

I have been trying, friend Julius, to understand some remarks Elijah made to me earlier. Perhaps I am beginning to, for it suddenly seems to me that 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.

He hesitated, then, almost as though he were surprised at his own words, he said, “Go, and sin no more!”

The division between human and robot is perhaps not as significant as that between intelligence and nonintelligence.

“How does it concern you people? It’s our problem. We’ll solve it. If not, it’s our own particular road to hell.”

“Better your own road to hell than another’s road to heaven, eh?”