Only in the pursuit of recognizing your reference.

IIRC, the Professor put the gun to his head, implying impending more drastic actions; Leela shouted something like "Professor, don't!" and he responded "don't what, use my memory ray to accurately recall the story?" Followed by the quote you paraphrased. I think it was in one of the episodes mentioning how he was responsible for the invention of robots.

Thanks for confirming the reference!