The robot turned to Julius Enderby, who was watching them with a flaccid face into which a certain vitality was only now beginning to return.
The robot said, "I have been trying, friend Julius, to understand some remarks Elijah made to me earlier. Perhaps I am beginning to, for it suddenly seems to me that the destruction of what should not be, that is, the destruction of what yuo people call evil, is less just and desirable than the conversion of this evil into what you call good."
He hesitated, then, almost as though he were surprised at his own words, he said, "Go, and sin no more!"
Baley, suddenly smiling, took R. Daneel's elbow, and they walked out the door, arm in arm.
[From Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel.]
Preach on, Brother Robot!
I think, by the way, that in many ways Asimov's Elijah Baley deserves to be given a recognized place among memorable literary detectives. A well-written detective will have a problem-solving quirk giving him insight beyond what people ordinarily have. Baley's, of course, is that he is always, for reasons both personal and political, trying to rig the conclusion to get the most desirable result; because he tries actually to prove the wanted conclusion, he often ends up discovering the true conclusion.
