Quotes & Sayings About Not Being Robots

Only when people got back to when the timequake hit did they stop being robots of their pasts. Only when free will kicked in could they stop running obstacle courses of their own construction. — Kurt Vonnegut

The practical case for manned spacef light gets ever-weaker with each advance in robots and miniaturisation - indeed, as a scientist or practical man, I see little purpose in sending people into space at all. But as a human being, I'm an enthusiast for manned missions. — Martin Rees

Millions of people never analyze themselves. Mentally they are mechanical products of the factory of their environment, preoccupied with breakfast, lunch, and dinner, working and sleeping, and going here and there to be entertained. They don't know what or why they are seeking, nor why they never realize complete happiness and lasting satisfaction. By evading self-analysis, people go on being robots, conditioned by their environment. True self-analysis is the greatest art of progress. — Paramahansa Yogananda

In a lot of Western science fiction, you need some form of conflict, whether it's aliens or robots. I think in Western culture, being more suspicious of science, and hubris, you'll see a lot of fear of creating something that goes out of control. — Cynthia Breazeal

The consequence of making it a business thing and making an artist the same as a Wall Street trader is that you do get a robot by the end of it. It becomes more robotic as opposed to being more soulful. — M.I.A.

If a modified robot were to drop a heavy weight upon a
human being, he would not be breaking the First Law, if he did so with the knowledge
that his strength and reaction speed would be sufficient to snatch the weight away before
it struck the man. However once the weight left his fingers, he would be no longer the
active medium. Only the blind force of gravity would be that. The robot could then
change his mind and merely by inaction, allow the weight to strike. The modified First
Law allows that (79). — Isaac Asimov

Most of the robots being developed for home use are functional in design - Gecko's homecare robot looks rather like the Star Wars robot R2-D2. Honda and Sony are designing robots that look more like the same movie's 'android' C-3PO. — Peter Singer

I got to draw monsters, robots and write funny stories. I loved doing that stuff and working with the actors. But it got to be less and less that stuff and more about trying to be everywhere and not being able to do one thing very enjoyably. — Jhonen Vasquez

They all nodded. A favorite game in quarry had been based on a highly successful film series with lasers, robots, and a princess who wore her hair like a pair of stereo headphones. (It had been agreed without a word being said that if anyone was going to play the part of any stupid princesses, it wasn't going to be Pepper.) But the game normally ended in a fight to be the one who was allowed to to wear the coal scuttle and blow up planets. — Terry Pratchett

Being a sci-fi geek myself and going to movies all my life, I came to the conclusion that there were really two camps of how robots have been designed. It's either the tin man, which is a human with metal skin, or it's an R2D2. — Andrew Stanton

Also, on account of the odd relationship between time and space, the people who do manage to time-jump sometimes space-jump at the same time and end up in places where they simply don't belong. Over there, for example," he said as a raucous DeLorean sports car rared into view from nowhere, "is that crazy American professorwho can't seem to stay put in one time, and, I must say, there is an absolute plague of of killer robots from the future being sent to change the past. Sleeping there under that banyan tree is a certain Hank Morgan of Hartford, Connecticut, who was accidentally transported one day back to King Arthur's Court, and stayed there until Merlin put him to sleep for 1300 thirteen hundred years. He was suppsoed to wake up back in his own time, but look at this lazy fellow! He's still snoring away, and has missed his slot. — Salman Rushdie

Productivity is for robots. What humans are going to be really good at is asking questions, being creative, and experiences." Kevin Kelly — Timothy Ferriss

Patrol dogs and Military Working Dogs were trained to protect their handlers. If the handler was attacked, and unconscious, or fighting for his or her life, the dog had to know what to do without being told. As Leland said, These animals aren't robots, goddamnit! They think! You train her up right, this beautiful dog will watch your back better than a squad of goddamned Marines! — Robert Crais

I don't see a future where we're all taught by robots. The real life, physical experience of being in a classroom and having conversations with knowledgeable people is immeasurably valuable and irreplaceable. — John Green

A behavior has occurred that is good, bad, or ambiguous. How have cultural factors stretching back to the origins of humans contributed to that behavior? And rustling cattle on a moonless night; or setting aside tending your cassava garden to raid your Amazonian neighbours; or building fortifications; or butchering every man, woman, and child in a village is irrelevant to that question. That's because all these study subjects are pastoralists, agriculturalists, or horticulturalists, lifestyles that emerged only in the last ten thousand to fourteen thousand years, after the domestication of plants and animals. In the context of hominin history stretching back hundreds of thousands of years, being a camel herder or farmer is nearly as newfangled as being a lobbyist advocating for legal rights for robots. For most of history, humans have been hunter-gatherers, a whole different kettle of fish. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Every day it's something worse being predicted. Mearth says that sooner or later copyright on books will be all in the past because they'll all be available electronically. She says that electric cars will replace gasoline-powered cars. She says that something called drones will be used to watch the entire country, she talks a lot about something called nanotechnology, and 3-dimensional printing and cellular phones being implanted into peoples' minds and all available careers being replaced by robots and human cloning and overpopulation and film becoming obsolete, cellular phones making regular telephones obsolete and LED lighting replacing everything and eventually she says that the planet will collapse and become an apathetic wreck," Alecto replied rapidly, his run-on sentence sounding sinister and dangerous. "Mearth says that eventually people will be able to see inside the minds of everyone. — Rebecca McNutt

People being encouraged to make up their own minds and think for themselves is so important. This world talks endlessly about freedom of choice, but we've never been [nothing] more than a nation of robots. Everybody is seduced by corporate culture. — Jeanette Winterson

The Three Laws of Robotics:
1: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm;
2: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law;
3: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law;
The Zeroth Law: A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. — Isaac Asimov

What are you?' Trout asked the boy scornfully. 'Some kind of gutless wonder?'
This, too, was the title of a book by Trout, The Gutless Wonder. It was about a robot
who had bad breath, who became popular after his halitosis was cured. But what made
the story remarkable, since it was written in 1932, was that it predicted the widespread
use of burning jellied gasoline on human beings.
It was dropped on them from airplanes. Robots did the dropping. They had no
conscience, and no circuits which would allow them to imagine what was happening to
the people on the ground.
Trout's leading robot looked like a human being, and could talk and dance and so on,
and go out with girls. And nobody held it against him that he dropped jellied gasoline on
people. But they found his halitosis unforgivable. But then he cleared that up, and he was
welcomed to the human race. — Kurt Vonnegut

I look around with divine precision and gazing free upon the earth, I see -
- architects and earthquakes - empaths and robots - fictions and near misses - lives changing, children sleeping, beauty brimming.
I see us - trying on ways of being - so sweet and messy, so worthwhile. — Laurie Perez

There are lots of examples of routine, middle-skilled jobs that involve relatively structured tasks, and those are the jobs that are being eliminated the fastest. Those kinds of jobs are easier for our friends in the artificial intelligence community to design robots to handle them. They could be software robots; they could be physical robots. — Erik Brynjolfsson

Who can keep us from recreating our life as we would like it to be-as it could, and should be? No one but ourselves can keep us from being artists, rather than marching forward like mere consumers, corporate robots, sheep. No one but ourselves can keep us from dancing with life instead of goose-stepping. In every moment recognizing our own creative imagination, the living picture we paint on the canvas of our lives. Everything is imagination. And imagination is freedom, but it can also be conditioning, bondage. — Surya Das

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

If everyone followed the rules, we wouldn't be human ... And I'd choose that than being a Robot over any day. — Jet Raymond Hodgkin

I find it difficult to converse with robots.....Don't be afraid to be an independent thinker. — Just Jewel

Money commands everything because that's our interpretation of capitalism ... what kind of world is that? It's a very uncomfortable interpretation of a human being. We have been turned into robots. — Muhammad Yunus

it was the thought of being injected with tiny machines that was making me queasy. Microscopic alien robots were swimming in my blood. It was creepy. — Craig Alanson

There is, in short, nothing wrong and everything right with inside trading. If anything, inside traders should be hailed as heroes of the free market instead of being apprehended in chains. But, you say, it is "unfair" for some men to know more than others, and actually to profit by that knowledge. But what kind of a world-view dubs it "unfair" for some men to know more than others? It is the world-view of the egalitarian, who believes that any kind of superiority of one person over another - in ability, or knowledge, or income, or wealth - is somehow "unfair." But men are not ants or bees or robots; each individual is unique and different from others, and ability, talent, and wealth will therefore differ. — Anonymous

The reason we feel disillusioned about our life and faith is not because Christianity isn't fulfilling, but because we've stopped thinking and acting like a Christian - someone who has sold all she has for the pearl of great value, someone who considers everything a loss compared to the greatness of knowing Jesus Christ. Without this opportunity to suffer we will, like Lance, "go crazy," becoming undisciplined robots who think that relief is found in leisure and irresponsibility when in fact it comes from being wholly devoted to God's kingdom. — Gary L. Thomas

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 artistically, literally, and scientifically to human culture as much as any human being now alive. What more can one ask? — Isaac Asimov

The boys in the office preferred Daft Punk and the song "Robot Rock" as an anthem, speaking excitedly and without irony about wanting to become robots one day. That made me wonder: Why? What's the pull of being a robot? — Katherine Losse

Eleven reasons you want to become a robot:

1. Robots are logical and know their purpose.
2. Robots have programming they understand.
3. Robots are not held to unattainable standards and then criticized when they fail.
4. Robots are not crippled by emotions they don't know how to process.
5. Robots are not judged based on what sex organs they were born with.
6. Robots have mechanical bodies that are strong and durable. They are not required to have sex.
7. Robots do not feel guilt (about existing, about failing, about being something other than expected).
8. Robots can multitask.
9. Robots do not feel unsafe all the time.
10. Robots are perfect machines that are capable and functional and can be fixed if something breaks.
11. Robots are happy. — A. Merc Rustad

R-4 got stuck on the First Law. "Can anyone really protect a human being from all harm whatever?" it thought. "No. It is inevitable that all humans must be injured, contract illnesses and ultimately die. The future can only be averted for humans who are already dead. Ergo ... " It took a dozen cops to subdue R-4, after his blood orgy in a department store (83 dead, none injured). — John Sladek

You have to realize that the game is played by people and not by robots. You have to try to get across in the broadcast the difference in personalities of these players, and that's part of the fun, of course, being in a position where you can pass along that knowledge because you represent the fan. — Martin Tyler

According to a recent study, depression is described as being the disease most destructive to humankind, largely because of the devastation it wreaks on our lives ... Yes, we could set up our minds to ignore our feelings and barricade ourselves from the winds and dust of the brain pattern. And we could become like robots, refusing to consider the passion and joys that could be ours. But then, we also might as well be dead. — G. Frank Lawlis

I think we should all start worrying about being downloaded and put in robots. — Jane Espenson

I don't buy into the dystopian scenarios of self-aware robots enslaving mankind, but you don't have to be a sci-fi conspiracy theorist to acknowledge that plenty of good, well-paying jobs are being taken over by machines. — Marco Rubio

Machines are becoming devastatingly capable of things like killing. Those machines have no place for empathy. There's billions of dollars being spent on that. Character robotics could plant the seed for robots that actually have empathy. — David Hanson

Maybe the answer is: Don't be an asshole, think before you open your trap, take responsibility for your words. Meaning, apologize when you're wrong and correct yourself moving forward - and don't constantly look for reasons to be offended and police well-meaning people's words. We want folks to talk to each other, right? Not just hang out with like-minded people all the time. Everyone is ignorant about something, and everyone is offended by something. If people can't have a calm, respectful dialogue without being hurt by ignorance, or without offending with insensitivity, then what the hell are we supposed to do? Surround ourselves with robots who don't challenge our ideas?" I — Penny Reid