How we cite our quotes: (Act.Paragraph)
Quote #1
[…] he could have created a jellyfish with a Socratic brain or a one-hundred-fifty-foot worm. But because he hadn't a shred of humor about him, he took it into his head to create an ordinary vertebrate, possibly a human being. (prologue.68)
Domin is criticizing old Rossum for a lack of imagination. He could have made a jellyfish with the brain of Socrates, but he just makes a human being. The joke here is in part, though, that a jellyfish with a superbrain and a human being are pretty much the same thing. Think about it: what's a person if not a smart jelly creature? People have trouble thinking of, or creating, non-human things. That causes most of the trouble in R.U.R.
Quote #2
[…] he wanted to somehow scientifically dethrone God. He was a frightful materialist and did everything on that account. For him the question was just to prove that God is unnecessary. (prologue.76)
Old Rossum's dream is to dethrone God by showing that you can create people materially—no soul or spirit necessary. Atheism is often seen as material, or practical, but Čapek suggests that it's actually a kind of pie-in-the-sky idealism. Atheists have their heads in the clouds. It's the agnostics who don't care about God at all who build the factories and rule the world.
Quote #3
[…] within the next ten years, Rossum's Universal Robots will produce so much wheat, so much cloth, so much everything that things will no longer have any value. Everyone will be able to take as much as he needs. There'll be no more poverty. Yes, people will be out of work, but by then there'll be no work left to be done. Everything will be done by living machines. People will do only what they enjoy. They will live only to perfect themselves. (prologue.317)
Domin's name is derived from "domination"; he wants to rule everything and control everything. That control is in the name of utopia—everyone will have tons of stuff. But it's also a little creepy there at the end. Do people really want to live to "perfect themselves"? And perfect themselves according to whom? Who has decided that they need to be more perfect, anyway? It's like Domin wants to make everybody over, just like he makes his own robots.