I believe that there was a great age, a great epoch when man did not make war: previous to 2000 B.C. Then the self had not really ...become aware of itself, it had not separated itself off, the spirit was not yet born, so there was no internal conflict, and hence no permanent external conflict.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You do not become a "dissident" just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by you...r personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The white man regards the universe as a gigantic machine hurtling through time and space to its final destruction: individuals in ...it are but tiny organisms with private lives that lead to private deaths: personal power, success and fame are the absolute measures of values, the things to live for. This outlook on life divides the universe into a host of individual little entities which cannot help being in constant conflict thereby hastening the approach of the hour of their final destruction.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or ch...ange occur without that abrasive friction of conflict.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The ideal of brotherhood of man, the building of the Just City, is one that cannot be discarded without lifelong feelings of disap...pointment and loss. But, if we are to live in the real world, discard it we must. Its very nobility makes the results of its breakdown doubly horrifying, and it breaks down, as it always will, not by some external agency but because it cannot work.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When a mother quarrels with a daughter, she has a double dose of unhappiness--hers from the conflict, and empathy with her daughte...r's from the conflict with her. Throughout her life a mother retains this special need to maintain a good relationship with her daughter.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error. It is these mingled opposites which people our life..., which make it pungent, intoxicating. We only exist in terms of this conflict, in the zone where black and white clash.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its p...eculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is not a certain conformity of manners that the painting of Van Gogh attacks, but rather the conformity of institutions themsel...ves. And even external nature, with her climates, her tides, and her equinoctial storms, cannot, after van Gogh's stay upon earth, maintain the same gravitation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let's start with the three fundamental Rules of Robotics.... We have: one, a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inact...ion, allow a human being to come to harm. Two, a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. And three, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »