A character without motivation is an automaton. They’re…

It takes a certain kind of mind to narrate, to work through character motivation, to be unforgiving to one's writer-self when it comes down…

— Cate Marvin

The human being is a self-propelled automaton entirely under the control of external influences. Willful and predetermined though they appear, his actions are governed…

— Nikola Tesla

Was that Will?" she said finally. Henry arched one ginger eyebrow. "Perhaps he's been kidnapped and replaced by an automaton," he suggested. "It seems…

— Cassandra Clare

“In telling a story one of the most successful devices for easily creating uncanny effects is to leave the reader in uncertainty whether a…

— Ernst Jentsch

“Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my…

— Charlotte Brontë

“What was it like to live amidst such machines, to be familiar with them, to have them shape one's earliest intuitions about machinery: how…

— Jessica Riskin

Charles Babbage proposed to make an automaton chess-player which should register mechanically the number of games lost and gained in consequence of every sort…

— William Stanley Jevons

“I wish my genius ran to making automatons,” he said. “I would invent one that would follow you around with a tray. It would…

— Courtney Milan

The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone…

— Erich Fromm

“Alan Turing’s halting problem: you can’t know if the cells will all die off without running the game until they do die off. Thus,…

— Richard Bookstaber

“Time can play all sorts of tricks on you. In the blink of an eye, babies appear in carriages, coffins disappear into the ground,…

— Brian Selznick

Man becomes virtually an automaton in the loss of his individuality and responsibility. He is the harp of a thousand strings played upon by…

— John Grier Hibben

A cat is a soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.

— Ambrose Bierce

Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on…

— Napoleon Bonaparte

The most fascinating powers don't mean a thing if the guy's poorly motivated or dull, and the most generic powers won't hurt a well-motivated…

— Kurt Busiek