Karel Čapek: Quotes about people

Karel Čapek was Czech writer. Explore interesting quotes on people.
Karel Čapek: 102   quotes 42   likes

“My dear Miss Glory, Robots are not people. They are mechanically more perfect than we are, they have an astounding intellectual capacity, but they have no soul.”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

People , Soul , Perfection

“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. If you could see how they licked my hands, and their puppies — oh, Primus, there's probably nothing more beautiful! You take them on your lap and cuddle them, and just sit there until sundown not thinking about anything and not worrying about anything. Then when you get up you feel as though you've done a hundred times more than a lot of work. Really, I'm not good for much of anything. Everyone says I'm not cut out for any kind of work. I don't know what I'm good for.”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

People , Beauty , Dogs , Feeling

“Each factory will be making Robots of a diťferent color, a different nationality, a different tongue; that they'll all be different — as different from one another as fingerprints; that 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… Thunder, we'll make Black Robots and Swedish Robots and Italian Robots and Chinese Robots, and then let someone try to drive the notion of brotherhood into the noggin of their organization…”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

Death , Hate , People , Color

“I wanted man to become a master! So he wouldn't have to live from hand to mouth! I didn't want to see another soul grow numb slaving over someone else's machines! I wanted there to be nothing, nothing, nothing left of that damned social mess! I abhorred degradation and suffering! I was fighting against poverty! I wanted a new generation of mankind! … I wanted to transform all of humanity into a world-wide aristocracy. Unrestricted, free, and supreme people. Something even greater than people.”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

People , World , Soul , Suffering

“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. . .”

Karel Čapek

R.U.R. supplement in The Saturday Review (1923)
Context: 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 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 that is the most dramatic element in modern civilization, that a human truth is opposed to another human truth no less human, ideal against ideal, positive worth against worth no less positive, instead of the struggle being as we are so often told, one between noble truth and vile selfish error.

People , Sense

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

Karel Čapek book The Absolute at Large

The Absolute at Large (1921)

People , World

“Why are there stars when there are no people? O God, why don't you just extinguish them? — Cool my brow, ancient night! Divine and fair as you always were — O night, what purpose do you serve? There are no lovers, no dreams. O nursemaid, dead as a sleep without dreams, you no longer hallow anyone's prayers. O mother of us all, you don't bless a single heart smitten with love. There is no love.”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

Love , God , People , Dreams

“We've become beings with souls… Something struggles within us. There are moments when something gets into us. Thoughts come to us which are not our own… People are our fathers! The voice that cries out that you want to live; the voice that complains; the voice that reasons; the voice that speaks of eternity — that is their voice!”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

People , Soul

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

Karel Čapek

Letters from England (1925)

People , Personality

“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… But before that some awful things may happen, Miss Glory. That just can't be avoided. But then the subjugation of man by man and the slavery of man to matter will cease. Never again will anyone pay for his bread with hatred and his life. There'll be no more laborers, no more secretaries. No one will have to mine coal or slave over someone else's machines. No longer will man need to destroy his soul doing work that he hates.”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

Life , Hate , People , Soul

“Robots of the world! Many people have fallen. By seizing the factory we have become the masters of everything. The age of mankind is over. A new world has begun! The rule of Robots!”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

People , Age , World

“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 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 that is the most dramatic element in modern civilization, that a human truth is opposed to another human truth no less human, ideal against ideal, positive worth against worth no less positive, instead of the struggle being as we are so often told, one between noble truth and vile selfish error.”

Karel Čapek

R.U.R. supplement in The Saturday Review (1923)

Selfishness , People , Truth , World

“Why are there stars when there are no people? O God, why don't you just extinguish them?”

Karel Čapek

Cool my brow, ancient night! Divine and fair as you always were — O night, what purpose do you serve? There are no lovers, no dreams. O nursemaid, dead as a sleep without dreams, you no longer hallow anyone's prayers. O mother of us all, you don't bless a single heart smitten with love. There is no love.
R.U.R. (1920)

God , Star , People