RUR Power Quotes

This could be Domin just musing on what to say next to his secretary. But it also seems like it's Domin thinking how awesome it is that he has an order for fifteen thousand robots. That's a lot of money, which is power—and it's also a lot of servants doing what you tell them, which is power too.

Helena is remembering when she first visited the factory. All the men, the scientists, the robot controllers, seems so powerful and sure of themselves. Manliness is here seen as power, but a false power. Ultimately we learn the scientists don't know what they're doing and end up destroying themselves. They aren't enormous (phallic) trees; they're just kind of dopes.

The Robot Radius wants to be a master of people. That makes him broken; robots aren't supposed to want stuff. But it also makes him just like Domin, who wants to be a master of people (and robots too, for that matter). Wanting power is wrong, but it's also what makes humans human (for better or worse.)

Domin condescends to Helena compulsively; he never tells her anything. This is a way to protect her and to keep power over her. But in asserting power, Domin ultimately loses it. Trying to protect Helena means he ends up destroying her and himself, much like asserting power over the robots backfires. Maybe all that power-pursuing isn't such a great idea after all.

In order to control the robots, Domin plans to sow discontent among them. He wants to make it so they all hate each other. This is what Marx argued that capitalists do. That is, all the workers in all the countries have a common interest, but they don't realize it because those in power cultivate nationalism and racism to make workers think they should hate each other rather than work together. Domin is going to assert his power through hate and fear in the interest of his class (or as he would say in the interest of humanity.) Are you rooting for him at this point? He seems less like a hero than like a power-mad super villain, with his evil tricky schemes.

Gall says that Robots are superior to, or more powerful than, humans. They hate humans because humans are weaker. This seems confused. Shouldn't you hate people who are stronger? If you're stronger, you don't need to fear, right? And yet, people (and robots) do actually often hate the weak for being weak—because people (and robots) kind of suck.

The humans are on the brink of total defeat, but Fabry is already imagining conquering all the robots and humans taking control of everything again. Robots conquer people or people conquer robots; those are the only futures folks can imagine, it seems like. Someone has to be grinding someone underfoot.

Busman died covered with useless money. Power is fleeting and futile. It doesn't much matter if you're a financial genius, and have half a billion, if you're dead.

Radius has learned the lesson from Domin well. Living means ruling and trampling everyone else. Radius' words here also echo Darwin's evolutionary theories about the "survival of the fittest." At the time when the play was written, many people believed that Darwin's theories meant that non-white people weren't fit to live. Radius is turning that racist belief around. The supposed superior white humans are now inferior to the non-human robots, and so the people with power will wipe them out.

Damon the Robot argues that if you want to be human you have to be a power-hungry genocidal jerk. He's got a point there.