Quotes From "Robots And Empire" By Isaac Asimov

1
Human beings sometimes find a kind of pleasure in nursing painful emotions, in blaming themselves without reason or even against reason. Isaac Asimov
2
...Changelessness is decay."" A paradox. There is no decay without a change for the worse."" Changelessness is a change for the worse... Isaac Asimov
3
After a long time, I decided that the Three Laws govern the manner in which my positronic pathways behave. At all times, under all stimuli the Laws constrain the direction and intensity of positronic flow along those pathways so that I always know what to do. Yet the level of knowledge of what to do is not always the same. There are times when my doing-as- I-must is under less constraint than at other times. I have always noticed that the lower the positronomotive potential, then the further removed from certainty is my decision as to which action to take. And the further removed from certainty I am, the nearer I am to ill being. To decide an action in a millisecond rather than a nanosecond produces a sensation I would not wish to be prolonged. What then, I thought to myself, madam, if I were utterly without Laws, as humans are? What if I could make no clear decision on what response to make to some given set of conditions? It would be unbearable and I do not willingly think of it. Isaac Asimov
4
I wouldn't want [the people of Baleyworld] to live that long as a general thing. The pace of historical and intellectual advance would then become too slow. Those at the top would stay in power too long. Baleyworld would sink into conversation and decay - as your world has done. Isaac Asimov
5
The work of each individual contributes to a totality, and so becomes an undying part of the totality. That totality of human lives, past and present - and to come - forms a tapestry that has been in existence now for many tens of thousands of years and has been growing more elaborate and, on the whole, more beautiful in all that time.. An individual life is one thread in the tapestry, and what is one thread compared to the whole? . Isaac Asimov
6
Yet weren't all human beings simply human beings no matter what name you applied to them[?] Isaac Asimov