Karel Čapek Quotes

His life was now the life of a collector, and that gave it meaning. Evening after evening he would count and arrange his cuttings under the indulgent eyes of Mrs. Povondra who knew that every man is partly mad and partly a little child; it was better for him to play with his cuttings than to go out drinking and playing cards. She even made some space in the scullery for all the boxes he had made himself for his collection; could anything more be asked of a wife?

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.

The only perfection which modern civilisation achieves is mechanical; machines are magnificent and immaculate but the life which serves them or is served by them isn't magnificent or shiny or more perfect or more comely.

Ono što nazivamo svojim životom, to nije sve što smo proživjeli; to je samo odabir. Previše je toga što proživljavamo, više nego što naš um može zahvatiti. Zato si izabiremo ovo ili ono, već što nam odgovara, pa iz toga ispletemo neku pojednostavnjenu priču; i onda taj proizvod nazivamo svojim životom. Ali koliko otpadaka pritom zanemarimo, koliko čudnih i strašnih stvari izostavimo, zaboga, kad bi to sve čovjek osvijestio! Ali mi možemo živjeti samo jedan jednostavan život. Proživjeti više od toga bilo bi izvan naše moći. Ne bismo imali snage živjeti kad usput ne bismo pogubili većinu života.

So, then, this was the greatest triumph of the human intellect. These ashes.

We made the Robots look too much alike. A hundred thousand identical faces all looking this way. A hundred thousand expressionless faces. It's a nightmare.

It's always the same thing, one war after another —

Too cheap, my dear fellow. Must Nature always be asked to straighten out the mess that man has made? And so, even you don't believe now that they could help themselves? So you see, you see; at the end you would again like to rely on someone or something to save you!

A man is something that feels happy, plays the piano, likes going for a walk, and in fact, wants to do a whole lot of things that are really unnecessary.