Unexpected Wisdom

An unskilled, unemployable man harming himself by punching and kicking the  robot is like Don Quixote tilting at a windmill. The robot tells the drunks who resent it:

"'There will always be men who think and dream and sing and carry on all the race has ever loved. The future belongs to them, not to you - or to me.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Quixote and the Windmill" AT Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 2 (Riverdale, NY, 2018), pp. 7-16 AT p. 15.

There is wisdom from an unexpected source and what we expect in a Poul Anderson story, a different perspective.

This story was published in Astounding in 1950, thus in one of the issues shown here. You will also recognize one of James Blish's flying cities although it should not show an exhaust.