Isaac Asimov

“Fifty years,” I hackneyed, “is a long time.”

“Not when you’re looking back at them,” she said. “You wonder how they vanished so quickly.”

I accept nothing on authority. A hypothesis must be backed by reason, or else it is worthless.

Milton Ashe is not the type to marry a head of hair and a pair of eyes.

“Nonsense,” Weston denied, with an involuntary nervous shiver. “That’s completely ridiculous. We had a long discussion at the time we bought Robbie about the First Law of Robotics. You know that it is impossible for a robot to harm a human being; that long before enough can go wrong to alter that First Law, a robot would be completely inoperable. It’s a mathematical impossibility. Besides I have an engineer from U.S. Robots here twice a year to give the poor gadget a complete overhaul. Why, there’s no more chance of anything at all going wrong with Robbie than there is of you or I suddenly going looney—considerably less, in fact.”

There's nothing like deduction. We've determined everything about our problem but the solution.

There is nothing so eternally adhesive as the memory of power.

The machine is only a tool after all, which can help humanity progress faster by taking some of the burdens of calculations and interpretations off its back. The task of the human brain remains what it has always been; that of discovering new data to be analyzed, and of devising new concepts to be tested.

The unwritten motto of United States Robot and Mechanical Men Corp. was well-known: “No employee makes the same mistake twice. He is fired the first time.”

Just you think first, and don't bother to speak afterward, either.

“You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason—if you pick the proper postulates. We have ours and Cutie [robot QT-1] has his.”

“Then let’s get at those postulates in a hurry. The storm’s due tomorrow.”

Powell sighed wearily. “That’s where everything falls down. Postulates are based on assumptions and adhered to by faith. Nothing in the Universe can shake them. ...”

Francis Quinn was a politician of the new school. That, of course, is a meaningless expression, as are all expressions of the sort. Most of the “new schools” we have were duplicated in the social life of ancient Greece, and perhaps, if we knew more about it, in the social life of ancient Sumeria and in the lake dwellings of prehistoric Switzerland as well.

“You’re the U. S. Robot’s psychologist, aren’t you?”

“Robopsychologist, please.”

“Oh, are robots so different from men, mentally?”

“Worlds different.” She allowed herself a frosty smile, “Robots are essentially decent.”