"It is barbaric," said Sutton.
"Perhaps so. But the humans are still barbaric in many other ways as well."
"You're impertinent," Sutton told him.
"I'm sick and tired of it," the robot said. "Sick and tired of the smugness of you humans. You say you've outlawed war and you haven't, really. You've just fixed it so no one dares to fight you. You say you have abolished crime and you have, except for human crime. And a lot of crime you have abolished isn't crime at all, except by human standards."
"You're taking a long chance, friend," said Sutton, softly, "talking the way you are."
"You can pull the plug on me," the robot told him, "any time you want to. Life isn't worth it, the kind of job I have."
He saw the look on Sutton's face and hurried on.
"Try to see it this way, sir. Through all his history, Man has been a killer. He was smart and brutal, even from the first. He was a puny thing, but he found how to use a club and rocks, and when the rocks weren't sharp enough he chipped them so they were. There were things, at first, he should not by rights have killed. They should have killed him. But he was smart and he had the club and flints and he killed the mammoth and the saber tooth and other things he could not have faced barehanded. So he won the Earth from the animals. He wiped them out, except the ones he allowed to live for the service that they gave him. And even as he fought with the animals, he fought with others of his kind. After the animals were gone, he kept on fighting…man against man, nation against nation."
"But that is past," said Sutton. "There hasn't been a war for more than a thousand years. Humans have no need of fighting now."
"That is just the point," the robot told him. "There is no more need of fighting, no more need of killing. Oh, once in a while, perhaps, on some far-off planet where a human must kill to protect his life or to uphold human dignity and power. But, by and large, there is no need of killing.