How we cite our quotes: (Act.Paragraph)
Quote #7
To hell with the dividends! Do you think I'd have worked even one hour for them? [He bangs on the table.] I did this for myself, do you hear? I wanted man to become a master! So he wouldn't have to live from hand to mouth! I didn't want to see another soul to grow numb slaving over someone else's machines! (2.60)
Domin has a dream, and it's a nice dream! He doesn't want anyone to have to work. But, he also wants man to be master—but master of what? The desire for power and the desire to help people seem like they all get mixed up together. Can you want to help people without also wanting to control them? Maybe you can, but not if you're named Domin.
Quote #8
I, too, had a dream. A Busmanish dream of a new world economy… But as I was sitting here balancing the books, it occurred to me that history is not made by great dreams, but by the petty wants of all respectable, moderately thievish and selfish people, that is, of everyone. All our ideas, loves, plans, heroic ideals, all those lofty things are worthless. (2.167)
Busman is the financier. He says, first, that he thought of a new economy, built around robots. But then he decided that great dreams aren't the thing—which is a Busmanish thing to say as well. It's all about money and selfishness; that's what economists always say. So, in refusing his great dream, Busman is maybe just dreaming a different great dream—a great dream in which all dreams are worthless.
Quote #9
FABRY: The Robots will die out. Within twenty years…
HALLEMEIER: […] there won't be a single one of those bastards left.
DR. GALL: And mankind will endure. In twenty years the world will belong to man again; even if it's only to a couple of savages on the tiniest island. (2.276-278)
This sounds like a happy awesome dream—mankind will return (yay!). But it's also a dream of genocide, that imagines all the robots dead. Notice that no one, anywhere, seems to be able to imagine a happy future with robots and humans living peacefully together as equals, rather than as master and servant. The problem in R.U.R., in some sense, is a failure of imagination, or dreams.