Karel Capek Quotes

As is well known, all collectors are prepared to steal or murder if it is a question of getting another piece for their collection; but this does not lower their moral character in the least.

It means that each factory will be making Robots of a different color, a different nationality, a different tongue; they'll all be different---as different from one another as fingerprints; they'll no longer be able to conspire with one another; and we---we people will help to foster their prejudices and cultivate their mutual lack of understanding, you see? So that any given Robot, to the day of its death, right to the grave, will forever hate a Robot bearing the trademark of another factory.

Cognition is not fighting, but once someone knows a lot, he will have much to fight for, so much that he will be called a relativist because of it.

You still stand watch, O human star, burning without a flicker, perfect flame, bright and resourceful spirit. Each of your rays a great idea - O torch which passes from hand to hand, from age to age, world without end.

The earth will probably sink and drown; but at least it will be the result of generally acknowledged political and economic ideas, at least it will be accomplished with the help of the science, industry, and public opinion, with the application of all human ingenuity! No cosmic catastrophy, nothing but state, official, economic, and other causes. Nothing can be done to prevent it.

But old Rossum meant it literally.
He wanted to become a sort of scientific substitute for God. He was a fearful materialist, and that's why he did it all. His sole purpose was nothing more nor less than to prove that God was no longer necessary.

It was a great thing to be a human being. It was something tremendous. Suddenly I'm conscious of a million sensations buzzing in me like bees in a hive. Gentlemen, it was a great thing.

I had written the sentence, 'You mustn't think that the evolution that gave rise to us was the only evolutionary possibility on this planet ... that cultural developments could be shaped through the mediation of another animal species. If the biological conditions were favorable, some civilization not inferior to our own could arise in the depths of the sea ... Would it do the same stupid things mankind has done? Would it invite the same historical calamities? What would we say if some animal other than man declared that its education and its numbers gave it the sole right to occupy the entire world and hold sway over all creation?

The English gentleman is a combination of silence, courtesy, dignity, sport, newspapers and honesty.

You never realize a dog is a man's best friend until you start betting on horses.

I've had plenty of time to think things over up here in the mountains. I keep an eye on what's going on and I compare all the evidence. In fact I don't think about anything else. I don't know what it's all leading to, but one thing I'm sure of is that He doesn't have any kind of plan. He still doesn't have any idea what He's doing. Perhaps He hopes to do something big but He doesn't know how to go about it. Let me tell you, Bondy, all He is so far is a natural force. He's hopelessly informed about politics. He's a complete barbarian about economics. He should have taken over the Church, they do have some experience in ... Sometimes He seems to me just like a child.

Relativism is neither a method of fighting, nor a method of creating, for both of these are uncompromising and at times even ruthless; rather, it is a method of cognition.

but within the next ten years Rossum's Universal Robots will produce so much wheat, so much cloth, so much everything that things will no longer have any value. Everyone will be able to take as much as he needs. There'll be no more poverty. Yes, people will be out of work, but by then there'll be no work left to be done. Everything will be done by living machines. People will do only what they enjoy. They will live only to perfect themselves.

Besides, people never regard anything that serves and benefits them as mysterious; only the things which damage or threaten them are mysterious.

I've found a place that would amaze you. People used to live there, but now it's all overgrown and no one goes there. Absolutely no one - only me ... Just a little house and a garden. And two dogs.

Wherever on this planet ideals of personal freedom and dignity apply, there you will find the cultural inheritance of England.

You can have a revolution wherever you like, except in a government office; even were the world to come to an end, you'd have to destroy the universe first and then government offices.

Nothing is stranger to man than his own image.

Dumb dog. I bought a dog whistle. He won't use it.

Just imagine the silence in the world, if people talked only what they knew

Gentlemen, four-fifths of the earth's surface is covered by seas; that is unquestionably too much; the world's surface, the map of oceans and dry land, must be corrected. We shall give the world the workforce of the sea, gentlemen. This will no longer be the style of Captain van Toch; we shall replace the adventure story of pearls by the hymnic paean of labour.

Only years of practice will teach you the mysteries and bold certainty of a real gardener, who treads at random, yet tramples on nothing.

We´re two, two for everything, for love, life, for a fight and pain, for hours of happiness. Two for wins and losses, for life and for death - TWO!

After his death the gardener does not become a butterfly, intoxicated by the perfumes of the flowers, but a garden worm tasting all the dark, nitrogenous, and spicy delights of the soil.

It is a well–known fact that the greater a man is the less he has on his door–plate.

It's not possible to search for God using the methods of a detective ... There is no way. You can only wait till God's axe severs your roots: then you will understand that you are here only through a miracle, and you will remain fixed forever in wonderment and equilibrium.

Helena: Will they be happier when they can feel pain?
Dr. Gall: On the contrary. But they will be technically more perfect.

Nobody can hate man more than man.

Socialism is good when it comes to wages, but it tells me nothing when it comes to other questions in life that are more private and painful, for which I must seek answers elsewhere.

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?

Do you think that the soul first shows itself by a gnashing of teeth?

Robots of the world, you are ordered to exterminate the human race. Do not spare the men. Do not spare the women. Preserve only the factories, railroads, machines, mines, and raw materials. Destroy everything else. Then return to work. Work must not cease.

... Be there people either Conservatives or Socialists, Yellows or Reds, the most important thing is - and this is the point I wish particularly to stress - that all of them are right in the plain and moral sense of the word... I ask whether it is not possible to see in the present social conflict of the world an analogous struggle between two, three, five equally serious verities and equally generous idealisms? I think it is possible, and this is the most dramatic element in modern civilization, that a human truth is opposed to another truth no less human, ideal against ideal, positive words against words no less positive, instead of the struggle being, as we are so often told it is, one between noble truth and vile selfish error.

Among human beings, a cat is merely a cat; among cats, a cat is a prowling shadow in a jungle.

It is a foible of our human nature that when we have an extremely unpleasant experience, it gives us a peculiar satisfaction if it is "the biggest" of its disagreeable kind that has happened since the world began. During a heat wave, for instance, we are very pleased if the papers announce that it is "the highest temperature reached since the year 1881," and we feel a little resentment towards the year 1881 for having gone us one better. Or if our ears are frozen till all the skin peels off, it fills us with a certain happiness to learn that "it was the hardest frost recorded since 1786." It is just the same with wars. The war in progress is either the most righteous or the bloodiest, or the most successful, or the longest, since such and such a time; any superlative whatever always affords us the proud satisfaction of having been through something extraordinary and record-breaking.

Be these people either Conservatives or Socialists, Yellows or Reds, the most important thing is - and that is the point I want to stress - that all of them are right in the plain and moral sense of the word.

I think I am slowly becoming an anarchist, that this is only another label for my privateness, and I think that you will understand this in the sense of being against collectivity.

Well people are just one species too, aren't they. And it's never stopped them fighting with each other; all the same species and think of all the excuses for war they've used! It hasn't had to be about space to live in, it's been about power, prestige, influence, fame, resources and I don't know what else!

Robots do not hold on to life. They can't. They have nothing to hold on with - no soul, no instinct. Grass has more will to live than they do.

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!

It's astonishing what a number of churches and idiots there are in the world.

There came into the world an unlimited abundance of everything people need. But people need everything except unlimited abundance.

Let no one think that real gardening is a bucolic and meditative occupation. It is an insatiable passion, like everything else to which a man gives his heart.

Man will never be enslaved by machinery if the man tending the machine be paid enough.

So you see. If only the Newts were fighting-men, then perhaps something might be done; but men against men - that, my friend, can't be stopped.

Much melancholy has devolved upon mankind, and it is detestable to me that might will triumph in the end.

A guy wanted the vet to cut his dog's tail off. The vet asked why. Well, my mother in law is visiting next month and I want to eliminate any possible indication that she is welcome.

One never knows whether people have principles on principle or whether for their own personal satisfaction.

Art must not serve might.

I certainly don't know if you could claim that every theft is wrong, but I'll prove to you that every theft is forbidden, by simply locking you up.