Quotes About Humanity

You can't go from people to nonpeople.

Is it a loss?" Rachael repeated. "I don't really know; I have no way to tell. How does it feel to have a child? How does it feel to be born, for that matter? We're not born; we don't grow up; instead of dying from illness or old age, we wear out like ants. Ants again; that's what we are. Not you; I mean me. Chitinous reflex-machines who aren't really alive." She twisted her head to one side, said loudly, "I'm not alive!

In wretched little lives like that, someone must intervene. Or at least mark their sad comings and goings. Mark and if possible permanently record so they'll be remembered. For a better day, later on, when people will understand.

In the center of an irrational universe governed by an irrational Mind stands rational man.

Life which we can no longer distinguish; life carefully buried up to its forehead in the carcass of a dead world. In every cinder of the universe Mercer probably perceives inconspicuous life. Now I know, he thought. And once having seen through Mercer's eyes, I probably will never stop.

It horrified him, this thought: the ancient gigantic cannibal near-man flourishing now, ruling the world once more. We spent a million years escaping him, Frink thought, and now he's back. And not merely as the adversary . . . but as the master.

If you or I ever really accepted the moral responsibility for what we've done in our lifetime—we'd drop dead or go mad. Living creatures weren't made to understand what they do.

Dreadful low-class jingoistic racist invectives, unworthy of me.

Dovunque andrai, ti si richiederà di fare qualcosa di sbagliato. È la condizione fondamentale della vita essere costretti a far violenza alla propria personalità. Prima o poi, tutte le creature viventi devono farlo. È l'ombra estrema, il difetto della creazione; è la maledizione che si compie, la maledizione che si nutre della vita. In tutto l'universo.»

He thought, too, about his need for a real animal; within him an actual hatred once more manifested itself toward his electric sheep, which he had to tend, had to care about, as if it lived. The tyranny of an object, he thought. It doesn't know I exist. Like the androids, it had no ability to appreciate the existence of another.

And this is the straight dope, right here. These people are not exactly human. They don the dress but they're like monkeys dolled up in the circus. They're clever and can learn, but that is all.

In the absence of the Batys and Pris he found himself fading out, becoming strangely like the inert television set which he had just unplugged. You have to be with other people, he thought. In order to live at all. I mean, before they came here I could stand it, being alone in the building. But now it's changed. You can't go back, he thought. You can't go from people to nonpeople.

It will end, Childan thought. Someday. The very idea of place. Not governed and governing, but people. And

Pascal said, All history is one immortal man who continually learns.

I wonder, he wondered, if any human has ever felt this way before about an android.

And after all, they had been successful with the Jews and Gypsies and Bible Students.

And yet now and then he let himself steal a glance at her. Lovely dark colors of her skin, hair, and eyes. We are half-baked compared to them. Allowed out of the kiln before we were fully done. The old aboriginal myth; the truth, there.

There are people among us who are biologically human but who are androids in the metaphoric sense.

Yes, the novelist knows humanity, how worthless they are, ruled by their testicles, swayed by cowardice, selling out every cause because of their greed—all he's got to do is thump on the drum, and there's his response. And he laughing, of course, behind his hand at the effect he gets.

Come down here, he said, and we'll rent a hotel room. Why? Something I heard today, he said hoarsely. About situations involving human men and android women.

Do androids dream?

This rehearsal will end, the performance will end, the singers will die, eventually the last score of music will be destroyed in one wya or another; finally the name Mozart will vanish, the dust will have won. If not on this planet then another. We can evade it awhile.

Human beings had invented war, invented and manufactured the weapons, even invented the players, the fighters, the actors of the war. But they themselves could not venture forth, could not wage it themselves.

We human beings are created and yet we are more rational than the creator himself who spawned us.