As a robot I could have lived forever. But I tell you all today I would rather die a man, than live for all eternity as a machine. - Isaac Asimov

It was the addition of status that brought the little things: a more comfortable seat here, a better cut of meat there, a shorter wait in line at the other place. To the philosophical mind, these items might seem scarcely worth any great trouble to acquire.
Yet no one, however philosophical, could give up those privileges, once acquired, without a pang. That was the point.

And yet, in March of 1983, I presented Doubleday with the “long-awaited” third robot novel. It has no connection whatever with the ill-fated attempt of 1958, and its name is The Robots of Dawn.

He slept that night the sleep of a successfully stubborn man.