Writer Quotes

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him.

God, our genes, our environment, or some stupid programmer keying in code at an ancient terminal - there's no way free will can ever exist if we as individuals are the result of some external cause.

Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.

I hope I am remembered by my children as a good father.

Even if the whole earth and sea were turned to gold, they could hardly satisfy the avarice of a woman... You can more easily scratch a diamond with your fingernail than you can by any human ingenuity get a woman to consent to giving any of her savings.

Love is always a stranger in the house of avarice.

If out of all mankind one finds a single friend, he has found something more precious than any treasure, since there is nothing in the world so valuable that it can be compared to a real friend.

You still stand watch, O human star, burning without a flicker, perfect flame, bright and resourceful spirit. Each of your rays a great idea - O torch which passes from hand to hand, from age to age, world without end.

There came into the world an unlimited abundance of everything people need. But people need everything except unlimited abundance.

Socialism is good when it comes to wages, but it tells me nothing when it comes to other questions in life that are more private and painful, for which I must seek answers elsewhere.

Robots of the world, you are ordered to exterminate the human race. Do not spare the men. Do not spare the women. Preserve only the factories, railroads, machines, mines, and raw materials. Destroy everything else. Then return to work. Work must not cease.

Robots do not hold on to life. They can't. They have nothing to hold on with - no soul, no instinct. Grass has more will to live than they do.

Relativism is neither a method of fighting, nor a method of creating, for both of these are uncompromising and at times even ruthless; rather, it is a method of cognition.

People should be a little loony, Helena. That's the best thing about them.

One never knows whether people have principles on principle or whether for their own personal satisfaction.

Nothing is stranger to man than his own image.

My dear Miss Glory, Robots are not people. They are mechanically more perfect than we are, they have an astounding intellectual capacity, but they have no soul.

Much melancholy has devolved upon mankind, and it is detestable to me that might will triumph in the end.

Man will never be enslaved by machinery if the man tending the machine be paid enough.

It was a great thing to be a human being. It was something tremendous. Suddenly I'm conscious of a million sensations buzzing in me like bees in a hive. Gentlemen, it was a great thing.

If one must fight or create, it is necessary that this be preceded by the broadest possible knowledge.

If dogs could talk, perhaps we would find it as hard to get along with them as we do with people.

I've found a place that would amaze you. People used to live there, but now it's all overgrown and no one goes there. Absolutely no one - only me... Just a little house and a garden. And two dogs.

Great God of the Ants, thou hast granted victory to thy servants. I appoint thee honorary Colonel.

Cognition is not fighting, but once someone knows a lot, he will have much to fight for, so much that he will be called a relativist because of it.

Be these people either Conservatives or Socialists, Yellows or Reds, the most important thing is - and that is the point I want to stress - that all of them are right in the plain and moral sense of the word.

Any acceleration constitutes progress, Miss Glory. Nature had no understanding of the modern rate of work. From a technical standpoint the whole of childhood is pure nonsense. Simply wasted time. An untenable waste of time.

Wherever on this planet ideals of personal freedom and dignity apply, there you will find the cultural inheritance of England.

Relativism is not indifference; on the contrary, passionate indifference is necessary in order for you not to hear the voices that oppose your absolute decrees.

Art must not serve might.