“You either obey a law or you forfeit it. You can’t forget it with one breath and invoke it with the next.”
Source: Time and Again (1951), Chapter V (pp. 27-28)
Context: “You do not belong to any bona fide religion that prohibits killing?”
“I presume I could classify myself as a Christian,” said Sutton. “I believe there is a Commandment about killing.”
The robot shook his head. “It doesn’t count.”
“It is clear and specific,” Sutton argued. “It says, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”
“It is all of that,” the robot told him. “But it has been discredited. You humans discredited it yourselves. You never obeyed it. You either obey a law or you forfeit it. You can’t forget it with one breath and invoke it with the next.”
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Clifford D. Simak 137
American writer, journalist 1904–1988Related quotes
“Justice? -- You get justice in the next world. In this one you have the law.”
Source: A Frolic of His Own
“You must obey the law, always, not only when they grab you by your special place.”
Надо исполнять закон всегда, а не только тогда, когда схватили за одно место.
Interview, 4 November 2003
2000 - 2005
“You can’t make people happy by law.”
Usenet
Context: You can’t make people happy by law. If you said to a bunch of average people two hundred years ago “Would you be happy in a world where medical care is widely available, houses are clean, the world’s music and sights and foods can be brought into your home at small cost, traveling even 100 miles is easy, childbirth is generally not fatal to mother or child, you don’t have to die of dental abcesses and you don’t have to do what the squire tells you” they’d think you were talking about the New Jerusalem and say ‘yes’.
As quoted in Time (17 February 1958)