Wild Robot Quotes

You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live.

We don’t have to fall into the same category to be of equal value.

I think there’s something beautiful about being lucky enough to witness a thing on its way out.

Mosscap considered. “Because I know that no matter what, I’m wonderful,” it said.

Sometimes a person reaches a point in their life when it becomes absolutely essential to get the fuck out of the city

We’re all just trying to be comfortable, and well fed, and unafraid.

You’re an animal, Sibling Dex. You are not separate or other. You’re an animal. And animals have no purpose. Nothing has a purpose. The world simply is. If you want to do things that are meaningful to others, fine! Good! So do I! But if I wanted to crawl into a cave and watch stalagmites with Frostfrog for the remainder of my days, that would also be both fine and good. You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live. That is all most animals do.

Then how,” Dex said, “how does the idea of maybe being meaningless sit well with you?” Mosscap considered. “Because I know that no matter what, I’m wonderful,

Do you not find consciousness alone to be the most exhilarating thing? Here we are, in this incomprehensibly large universe, on this one tiny moon around this one incidental planet, and in all the time this entire scenario has existed, every component has been recycled over and over and over again into infinitely incredible configurations, and sometimes, those configurations are special enough to be able to see the world around them. You and I—we’re just atoms that arranged themselves the right way, and we can understand that about ourselves. Is that not amazing?

Still. Something is missing. Something is off. So, how fucking spoiled am I, then? How fucking broken? What is wrong with me that I can have everything I could ever want and have ever asked for and still wake up in the morning feeling like every day is a slog?

Without constructs, you will unravel few mysteries. Without knowledge of the mysteries, your constructs will fail. These pursuits are what make us, but without comfort, you will lack the strength to sustain either.

You and I -- we're just atoms that arranged themselves the right way, and we can understand that about ourselves. Is that not amazing?

If you understand that robots' lack of purpose - our refusal of your purpose - is the crowning mark of our intellectual maturity, why do you put so much energy in seeking the opposite?

If we want change, or good fortune, or solace, we have to create it for ourselves.

Mr. Smith yelled at the doctor, What have you done to my boy? He's not flesh and blood, he's aluminum alloy!" The doctor said gently, What I'm going to say will sound pretty wild. But you're not the father of this strange looking child. You see, there still is some question about the child's gender, but we think that its father is a microwave blender.

I wish I could understand experiences I’m incapable of having.

I appreciate the intent. I really do. But if you don’t want to infringe upon my agency, let me have agency.

....We're machines, and machines are objects. Objects are its." "I'd say you're more than just an object," Dex said. The robot looked a touch offended. "I would never call you just an animal, Sibling Dex." It turned its gaze to the road, head held high. "We don't have to fall into the same category to be of equal value.

You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to just exist in this world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live.

Everybody thinks they're the exception to the rule, and that's exactly where the trouble starts. One person can do a lot of damage.

He’s the guy who’ll do a ridiculous robot dance to make you laugh, who’ll lick the tip of your nose, make a fool out of himself for a smile. I’m sure if I tried to wrestle him to the ground, he’d let me win. And enjoy every minute.

Mosscap considered. “Because I know that no matter what, I’m wonderful,” it said. There was nothing arrogant about the statement, nothing flippant or brash. It was merely an acknowledgment, a simple truth shared.

For anybody who could use a break.

There’s just some things in the universe that are better left un-fucked-with.

The wilderness was not known for letting the foolish return.

Are you afraid of that?” they asked. “Of death?” “Of course,” Mosscap said. “All conscious things are. Why else do snakes bite? Why do birds fly away? But that’s part of the lesson too, I think. It’s very odd, isn’t it? The thing every being fears most is the only thing that’s for certain? It seems almost cruel, to have that so…” “So baked in?” “Yes.

Sometimes, a person reaches a point in their life when it becomes absolutely essential to get the fuck out of the city.

You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it.

I'll tell you what: If I could do it all over again, I'd spend more time helping others. All I've ever done is dig tunnels. Some of them were real beauties too, but they're all hidden underground, where they're no good to anyone but me.

The paradox is that the ecosysytem as a whole needs its participants to ac with restraint in order to avoid collapse, but the participants themselves have no inbuilt mechanism to encourage such behavior. Other than fear? Other than fear, which is a feeling you want to avoid or stop at all costs

Find the strength to do both.

So, we’re smarter than our remnants, is what you’re saying.” Mosscap gave a slow nod. “If we choose to be.

But I do not know how to act like a mother.” “Oh, it’s nothing, you just have to provide the gosling with food and water and shelter, make him feel loved but don’t pamper him too much, keep him away from danger, and make sure he learns to walk and talk and swim and fly and get along with others and look after himself. And that’s really all there is to motherhood!” The

And yet, if they were completely honest, the thing they had come to look forward to most was not the smiles nor the gifts nor the sense of work well done, but the part that came after all of that. The part when they returned to their wagon, shut themself inside, and spent a few precious, shapeless hours entirely alone. Why wasn't it enough?

I know about a lot of things, but only a little in each regard.

If you stand in a forest long enough, eventually something will fall on you. And Roz had been standing in the forest long enough.

Fifty percent of Panga’s single continent was designated for human use; the rest was left to nature, and the ocean was barely touched at all. It was a crazy split, if you thought about it: half the land for a single species, half for the hundreds of thousands of others. But then, humans had a knack for throwing things out of balance. Finding a limit they’d stick to was victory enough.

Robot Boy Mr. an Mrs. Smith had a wonderful life. They were a normal, happy husband and wife. One day they got news that made Mr. Smith glad. Mrs. Smith would would be a mom which would make him the dad! But something was wrong with their bundle of joy. It wasn't human at all, it was a robot boy! He wasn't warm and cuddly and he didn't have skin. Instead there was a cold, thin layer of tin. There were wires and tubes sticking out of his head. He just lay there and stared, not living or dead. The only time he seemed alive at all was with a long extension cord plugged into the wall. Mr. Smith yelled at the doctor, "What have you done to my boy? He's not flesh and blood, he's aluminum alloy!" The doctor said gently, "What I'm going to say will sound pretty wild. But you're not the father of this strange looking child. You see, there still is some question about the child's gender, but we think that its father is a microwave blender." The Smith's lives were now filled with misery and strife. Mrs. Smith hated her husband, and he hated his wife. He never forgave her unholy alliance: a sexual encounter with a kitchen appliance. And Robot Boy grew to be a young man. Though he was often mistaken for a garbage can.

Fear is miserable, as is pain. As is hunger. Every animal is hardwired to do absolutely anything to stop those feelings as fast as possible. We’re all just trying to be comfortable, and well fed, and unafraid.

You’re an animal, Sibling Dex. You are not separate or other. You’re an animal. And animals have no purpose. Nothing has a purpose. The world simply is.

Everything else breaks down and is made into other things.

It is difficult for anyone born and raised in human infrastructure to truly internalize the fact that your view of the world is backward. Even if you fully know that you live in a natural world that existed before you and will continue long after, even if you know that the wilderness is the default state of things, and that nature is not something that only happens in carefully curated enclaves between towns, something that pops up in empty spaces if you ignore them for a while, even if you spend your whole life believing yourself to be deeply in touch with the ebb and flow, the cycle, the ecosystem as it actually is, you will still have trouble picturing an untouched world. You will still struggle to understand that human constructs are carved out and overlaid, that these are the places that are the in-between, not the other way around.

They pulled out their pocket computer, as was their habit first thing, dimly aware of the hope that always spurred them to do so—that there might be something good there, something exciting or nourishing, something that would replace the weariness.

I do not have a purpose any more than a mouse or a slug or a thornbush does. Why do you have to have one in order to feel content?

She closed her eyes and let out a tremendous sigh. Her shoulders visibly slumped. She’d always had the ability to relax them; she’d just needed permission to do so.

It felt, in that moment, like time had compressed, like history was no longer segmented into Ages and Eras, but here, living, now.

It is difficult for anyone born and raised in human infrastructure to truly internalize the fact that your view of the world is backward.

The island was teeming with life. And now it had a new kind of life. A strange kind of life. Artificial life.

What's the purpose of a robot, Sibling Dex?" Mosscap tapped its chest; the sound echoed lightly. "What's the purpose of me?" "You're here to learn about people." "That's something I'm doing. That's not my reason for being. When I am done with this, I will do other things. I do not have a purpose any more than a mouse or a slug or a thornbush does. Why do you have to have one in order to feel content?

That's what scares me. My life is . . . it. There's nothing else, on either end of it. I don't have remnants in the same way that you do, or a plate inside my chest. I don't know what my pieces were before they were me, and I don't know what they'll become after. All I have is right now, and at some point, I'll just end, and I can't predict when that will be, and - and if I don't use this time for something, if I don't make the absolute most of it, then I'll have wasted something precious.

An uncomfortable question popped into Jaya's mind. "Roz, don't take this the wrong way," she began, "but is it possible that you are defective?" "Don't say that, Jaya!" cried her brother. "No, it is okay," said the robot. "I have asked myself that same question. I do not feel defective. I feel . . . different. Is being different the same as being defective?" "I don't think so," said Jaya. "Or else we're all a little defective.

So, the paradox is that the ecosystem as a whole needs its participants to act with restraint in order to avoid collapse, but the participants themselves have no inbuilt mechanism to encourage such behavior.

I’d say you’re more than just an object,’ Dex said. The robot looked a touch offended. ‘I would never call you just an animal, Sibling Dex.’ It turned it’s gaze to the road, head held high. ‘We don’t have to fall into the same category to be of equal value.

Dex realized with a stomach-souring thud that they were standing on the wrong side of the vast gulf between having read about doing a thing and doing the thing.

Repeating history that had left living memory was an all-too-human tendency.

The thing every being fears most is the only thing that’s for certain?

The human body can adapt to almost anything, but it is deceptively selective about the way it does so.

Reader, there's another important quality that children possess. In addition to being sneaky and smart, they're also compassionate. Children care about others, and about the world.

As the robot looked out at the island, it never even occurred to her that she might not belong there. As far as Roz knew, she was home.

Despite these blessings, sometimes Dex could not sleep. In those hours, they frequently asked themself what it was they were doing. They never truly felt like they got a handle on that. They kept doing it all the same.

tapped its chest; the sound echoed lightly. “What’s the purpose of me?” “You’re here to learn about people.” “That’s something I’m doing. That’s not my reason for being. When I am done with this, I will do other things. I do not

Allalae holds, Allalae warms,” they panted. “Allalae soothes and Allalae charms.

The robot cocked its rectangular head at Dex. “How do you know when you’re satisfied?

A reliable device built to last a lifetime, as all computers were.

Everybody needed a cup of tea sometimes. Just an hour or two to sit and do something nice, and then they could get back to whatever it was. Find the strength to do both.

If you love your job it never feels like work,

My mind is strong, but my body will not last forever. I want to survive as long as possible. And to do that I will need the help of my friends.

You’ll never be the perfect mother, so just do the best you can. All Brightbill really needs is to know you’re doing your best.

You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live. That is all most animals do.

I threw myself into my work, I went to all the places that used to inspire me, I listened to music and looked at art, I exercised and had sex and got plenty of sleep and ate my vegetables, and still. Still. Something is missing. Something is off. So, how fucking spoiled am I, then? How fucking broken? What is wrong with me that I can have everything I could ever want and have ever asked for and still wake up in the morning feeling like every day is a slog?

With effort, they turned the wagon around and headed for a road they’d never seen before. What are you doing? they thought. The hell are you doing? I don’t know, they replied with a nervous grin. I have no idea.

Then how,” Dex said, “how does the idea of maybe being meaningless sit well with you?” Mosscap considered. “Because I know that no matter what, I’m wonderful,” it said. There was nothing arrogant about the statement, nothing flippant or brash. It was merely an acknowledgment, a simple truth shared.

All I have is right now, and at some point, I’ll just end, and I can’t predict when that will be, and—and if I don’t use this time for something, if I don’t make the absolute most of it, then I’ll have wasted something precious.

Centuries old, but recently widened, the highway was the same road used by pagan armies, pilgrims, peasants, donkey carts, nomads, wild horsemen out of the east, artillery, tanks, and ten-ton trucks. Its traffic gushed or trickled or dripped, according to the age and season. Once before, long ago, there had been six lanes and robot traffic. Then the traffic had stopped, the paving had cracked, and sparse grass grew in the cracks after an occasional rain. Dust had covered it. Desert dwellers had dug up its broken concrete for the building of hovels and barricades. Erosion made it a desert trail, crossing wilderness. But now there were six lanes and robot traffic, as before.

You’re an animal. And animals have no purpose. Nothing has a purpose. The world simply

They’d never lived anywhere with cricket song, yet once they registered its absence in the City’s soundscape, it couldn’t be ignored.

What do humans need? is an unanswerable question. That changes from person to person, minute to minute. We can't predict our needs, beyond the base things we require to survive.

Oscar ran after them, barking, “Is that food? It smells like food! I want food!

Okay. Mosscap. I'm Dex. Do you have a gender?" "No." "Me neither.

She discovered that all the different animals shared one common language; they just spoke the language in different ways. You might say each species spoke with its own unique accent.

Refusal of purpose is the crowning mark of intellectual maturity. . . Nothing has a purpose. The world simply *is*. . . . It is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. . . . Because I know that no matter what, I'm wonderful.

The wilderness really can be ugly sometimes. But from that ugliness came beauty. You see, those poor dead creatures returned to the earth, their bodies nourished the soil, and they helped create the most dazzling spring bloom the island had ever known.

Tea service wasn’t anything arcane. People came to the wagon with their problems and left with a fresh-brewed cup. Dex had taken respite in tea parlors plenty of times, as everyone did, and they’d read plenty of books about the particulars of the practice. Endless electronic ink had been spilled over the old tradition, but all of it could be boiled down to listen to people, give tea. Uncomplicated as could be.

As you might know, robots don’t really feel emotions. Not the way animals do. And yet, as she sat in her crumpled crate, Roz felt something like curiosity. She was curious about the warm ball of light shining down from above. So her computer brain went to work, and she identified the light. It was the sun.

You do want him to survive, don’t you?” said the goose. “Yes, I do want him to survive,” said the robot. “But I do not know how to act like a mother.” “Oh, it’s nothing, you just have to provide the gosling with food and water and shelter, make him feel loved but don’t pamper him too much, keep him away from danger, and make sure he learns to walk and talk and swim and fly and get along with others and look after himself. And that’s really all there is to motherhood!

Vast civilizations lay within the mosaic of dirt: hymenopteran labyrinths, rodential panic rooms, life-giving airways sculpted by the traffic of worms, hopeful spiders’ hunting cabins, crash pads for nomadic beetles, trees shyly locking toes with one another. It was here that you’d find the resourcefulness of rot, the wholeness of fungi.

But that’s … that’s immortality. How is that less desirable?” “Because nothing else in the world behaves that way. Everything else breaks down and is made into other things.

Mosscap crossed its arms. “If you had a friend who was taller than you, and you couldn’t reach something, would you let that friend help?” “Yes, but—” “But? How is this any different?” “It’s … it’s different. My friends aren’t robots.” The robot mulled that over. “So, you see me as more person than object, even though that’s very, very wrong, but you can’t see me as a friend, even though I’d like to be?” Dex had no idea what to say to that.

Where are you going?” “Uh,” said Kami, eyeballing her wildly. “I’m going to buy some drugs.” Lillian stared. “I beg your pardon?” “This is a really stressful time for everyone,” said Kami. “So I thought maybe I could buy a little weed, take the edge off. I might be a while. This is a very clean-living town, apart from all the murders, so I don’t actually know any drug dealers. I realize Jared kind of looks like one, but he’s not, which is a shame because I think the drug dealer’s girlfriend gets her drugs free.” “I realize you are attempting to be humorous,” said Lillian, after a pause during which she stared some more. “I don’t understand it.” “Hey, you’re not the only family with a legacy. ‘Glass’ rhymes with ‘sass.’ Have you met my dad?” “I have had that dubious pleasure,” said Lillian. “He is, in fact, meant to be meeting me in order to, and I quote, ‘teach me to integrate better with society, display leadership skills, win over the populace, and stop acting like a robot princess from space.’ I admit that the humor in his humor escapes me as well.” She paused and suddenly looked determined. “I’m going to start without him.

Precisely. It ignores the greater meaning born out of the combination of those things.” Mosscap touched their metal torso, smiling with pride. “I am made of metal and numbers; you are made of water and genes. But we are each something more than that. And we can’t define what that something more is simply by our raw components. You don’t perceive the way an ant does any more than I perceive like a … I don’t know. A vacuum cleaner. Do you still have vacuum cleaners?

Brightbill had been Roz's son from the moment she picked up his egg. She had saved him from certain death, and then he had saved her. He was the reason Roz had lived so well for so long. And if she wanted to continue living, if she wanted to be wild again, she needed to be with her family and her friends on her island. So, as Roz raced through the sky, she began computing a plan. She would get the repairs she needed. She would escape from her new life. She would find her way back home.

I have it so good. So absurdly, improbably good. I didn't do anything to deserve it, but I have it. I'm healthy. I've never gone hungry. And yes, to answer your question, I'm- I'm loved. I lived in a beautiful place, did meaningful work. The world we made out there, Mosscap, it's- it's nothing like what your originals left. It's a good world, a beautiful world. It's not perfect, but we've fixed it so much. We made a good place, struck a good balance. And yet every fucking day in the City, I woke up hollow, and... and just... tired, y'know? So, I did something else instead. I packed up everything, and I learned a brand-new thing from scratch, and gods, I worked hard for it. I worked really hard. I thought, if I can just do that, if I can do it well, I'll feel okay. And guess what? I do do it well. I'm good at what I do. I make people happy. I make people feel better. And yet I still wake up tired, like... like something's missing. I tried talking to friends, and family, and nobody got it, so I stopped bringing it up, and then I stopped talking to them altogether, because I couldn't explain, and I was tired of pretending like everything was fine. I went to doctors, to make sure I wasn't sick and that my head was okay. I read books and monastic texts and everything I could find. I threw myself into my work, I went to all the places that used to inspire me, I listened to music and looked at art, I exercised and had sex and got plenty of sleep and ate my vegetables, and still. Still. Something is missing. Something is off. So, how fucking spoiled am I, then? How fucking broken? What is wrong with me that I can have everything I could ever want and have ever asked for and still wake up in the morning feeling like every day is a slog?

Psikologların söylediğine göre,hayatta öyle anlar vardır ki günaha -veya toplumun günah saydığı şeylere duyulan tutku kişinin benliğine o kadar el koyar ki bedenin her lifi, beynin her hücresi sanki korkunç itkilerle ayaklanır. Böyle zamanlarda kadınlar ve erkekler istem bağımsızlığını kaybederler. Kendilerini bekleyen sona kurulu birer robot gibi ilerlerler. Seçme yetisi ellerinden alınmıştır. Bilinç ya öldürülmüş, ya da sağsa, yalnızca isyan etmeye cazibe katmak, inatçılığı şirin göstermek için yaşıyordur. Çünkü bütün günahların kaynağı, ilahiyatçıların bıkıp usanmadan söyledikleri gibi, büyüklerin sözünü dinlememektir.

I went through the library and found a book that taught me how. I’ve never read a book before; it was very exciting. They’re not supposed to fall apart when you touch them, though, right?” Somewhere in the world, an archaeologist was screaming, but Dex smiled, partly amused, mostly relieved that the hermitage wasn’t burning down around them.

It is difficult for anyone born and raised in human infrastructure to truly internalize the fact that your view of the world is backward. Even if you fully know that you live in a natural world that existed before you and will continue long after, even if you know that the wilderness is the default state of things, and that nature is not something that only happens in carefully curated enclaves between towns, something that pops up in empty spaces if you ignore them for a while, even if you spend your whole life believing yourself to be deeply in touch with the ebb and flow, the cycle, the ecosystem as it actually is, you will still have trouble picturing an untouched world. You

Widely admired by the public at large, Mayer has many enemies within her industry. They say she is robotic, stuck up, and absurd in her obsession with detail. They say her fixation with the user experience masks a disdain for the moneymaking side of the technology industry. Then there is her inner circle, full of young, wildly loyal men and women.

My life is...it. There's nothing else, on either end of it. I don't have remnants in the same way that you do, or a plate inside my chest. I don't know what my pieces were before they were me, and I don't know what they'll become after. All I have is right now, and at some point, I'll just end, and I can't predict when that will be, and - and if I don't use this time for something, if I don't make the absolute most of it, then I'll have wasted something precious.

It’s pretty here,” Dex said. “I wouldn’t have imagined I’d say that about a place like this, but—” “Yes, it is,” Mosscap said, as if making a decision within itself. “It is. Dying things often are.” Dex raised an eyebrow. “That’s a little macabre.” “Do you think so?” said Mosscap with surprise. “Hmm. I disagree.” It absently touched a soft fern growing nearby, petting the fronds like fur. “I think there’s something beautiful about being lucky enough to witness a thing on its way out.

The Pyrenean ibex, an extinct form of wild mountain goat, was brought back to life in 2009 through cloning of dna taken from skin samples. This was followed in June of 2010 by researchers at Jeju National University in Korea cloning a bull that had been dead for two years. Cloning methods are also being studied for use in bringing back Tasmanian tigers, woolly mammoths, and other extinct creatures, and in the March/April 2010 edition of the respected Archaeology magazine, a feature article by Zah Zorich (“Should We Clone Neanderthals?”) called for the resurrection via cloning of what some consider to be man’s closest extinct relative, the Neanderthals. National Geographic confirmed this possibility in its May 2009 special report, “Recipe for a Resurrection,” quoting Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University, an authority on ancient dna who served as a scientific consultant for the movie Jurassic Park, saying: “I laughed when Steven Spielberg said that cloning extinct animals was inevitable. But I’m not laughing anymore.… This is going to happen.

One of those was Gary Bradski, an expert in machine vision at Intel Labs in Santa Clara. The company was the world’s largest chipmaker and had developed a manufacturing strategy called “copy exact,” a way of developing next-generation manufacturing techniques to make ever-smaller chips. Intel would develop a new technology at a prototype facility and then export that process to wherever it planned to produce the denser chips in volume. It was a system that required discipline, and Bradski was a bit of a “Wild Duck”—a term that IBM originally used to describe employees who refused to fly in formation—compared to typical engineers in Intel’s regimented semiconductor manufacturing culture. A refugee from the high-flying finance world of “quants” on the East Coast, Bradski arrived at Intel in 1996 and was forced to spend a year doing boring grunt work, like developing an image-processing software library for factory automation applications. After paying his dues, he was moved to the chipmaker’s research laboratory and started researching interesting projects. Bradski had grown up in Palo Alto before leaving to study physics and artificial intelligence at Berkeley and Boston University. He returned because he had been bitten by the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial bug.