So young Rossum said to himself: “A man is something that feels happy, plays the piano, likes going for a walk, and, in fact, wants to do a whole lot of things that are really unnecessary.”
Book 1920
R.U.R. quotes
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About the book
The Czech play that gave the world the word "robot". On a remote island, a company mass-produces artificial workers that are cheap, tireless and without feeling, promising a future in which no one has to labor again. When an idealistic young visitor arrives to plead for the Robots' rights, she finds the men who run the factory far more certain of that future than she is.
7 quotes
Helena: But man is supposed to be the product of God. Domin: All the worse. God hasn’t the slightest notion of modern engineering.
If the timetable holds good, human laws hold good. Divine laws hold good, the laws of the universe hold good, everything holds good that ought to hold good. … The timetable is more significant than the gospel, more than Homer, more than the whole of Kant…
Alquist: Well, I’m an old man, you know. I’ve got old-fashioned ways. And I’m afraid of all this progress, and these new-fangled ideas. Helena: Like Nana? Alquist: Yes, like Nana. Has Nana got a prayer book? Helena: Yes, a big thick one. Alquist: And has it…
Slaughter and domination are necessary if you would be human beings. Read history.
Alquist: Domin, Domin, what you say sounds too much like Paradise. There was something good in service and something great in humility. There was some kind of virtue in toil and weariness. Domin: Perhaps, but we cannot reckon with what is lost when we start…
My dear Miss Glory, the Robots are not people. Mechanically they are more perfect than we are; they have an enormously developed intelligence, but they have no soul.