How we cite our quotes: (Story title.paragraph)
Quote #1
"Now he has creatures to help him; stronger creatures than himself, more faithful, more useful, and absolutely devoted to him." (Introduction.30)
Up in our "Morality and Ethics" section, Calvin notes that robots are better than people morally, but they're also better than humans on a physical level. Still, even though robots are superior to people ("stronger… more useful"), they're totally under our power ("faithful… devoted"). This issue comes up in "Little Lost Robot," and it's an issue we might want to think about: what does it mean for something superior to be totally dominated by an inferior?
Quote #2
And yet he loved his wife—and what was worse, his wife knew it. George Weston, after all, was only a man—poor thing… (Robbie.94)
In these stories, Power comes in different forms. And here's one of them: George Weston may have certain power over his family (this is, after all, a story written in the 1940s, when people had certain ideas about how wives were supposed to be subservient to their husbands). But Grace Weston has some power over George, in part because he seems like a nice guy who wants his wife to be happy.
Quote #3
"We can't go after Speedy ourselves, Mike—not on the Sunside. Even the new insosuits aren't good for more than twenty minutes in direct sunlight." (Runaround.30)
A nice reminder that the most powerful thing on Mercury is…Mercury itself. (Or, technically, the sun, which is very close to Mercury.) The environment is more powerful than human bodies or even human technology. Even Speedy is threatened by an unforeseen chemical interaction.