I, Robot Power Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Story title.paragraph)

Quote #4

"You're inferior creatures, with poor reasoning faculties, but I really feel a sort of affection for you." (Reason.122)

Cutie isn't exactly wrong about robots being superior. As he lays out in "Reason," robots are stronger, immune to radiation that would hurt people, and don't need to sleep. In terms of raw power, robots have more than humans. And yet, raw power isn't everything (as we saw earlier with the Westons). Even if humans are inferior, Cutie still feels some affection for them. So when they get in the way, he doesn't crush them, even though he could. How nice of him.

Quote #5

"There are six others under him in an extreme regimentation. He's got life and death power over those subsidiary robots and it must react on his mentality." (Catch that Rabbit.91)

This is Donovan overreacting, but he raises some interesting questions. Dave does have power over his subordinates—does having that sort of power change a person/robot? Well, we would say yes if Dave were a person, but as a robot, Dave is good, so it seems as if having power couldn't change him.

Quote #6

Lanning found his voice and let it out with a roar. "You're suspended, d'ye hear? You're relieved of all duties. You're broken, do you understand?" (Liar.165)

Here's a relatively straightforward example of power in I, Robot: Lanning is the boss and he's yelling at his employee, Bogert. So even when we have robots to help us do our work, bosses will still yell at workers. We guess some things will never change.