Archive

Quotes

Civilization, a much-abused word, stands for a high matter quite apart from telephones and electric lights.

—Edith Hamilton, 1930

Technology is so much fun, but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.

—Daniel Boorstin, 1978

The belly is the teacher of the arts and bestower of invention.

—Persius, c. 55

Machines seem to sense that I am afraid of them. It makes them hostile.

—Sharyn McCrumb, 1990

You can steal a lot more with a computer than with a gun.

—Gina Smith, 1997

Inventions that are not made, like babies that are not born, are rarely missed.

—John Kenneth Galbraith, 1958

Doing research on the web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly.

—Roger Ebert, 1998

If the human race wants to go to hell in a basket, technology can help it get there by jet.

—Charles M. Allen, 1967

All technologies should be assumed guilty until proven innocent.

—David Brower, 1992

When man wanted to make a machine that would walk, he created the wheel, which does not resemble a leg.

—Guillaume Apollinaire, 1917

All attempts to adapt our ethical code to our situation in the technological age have failed.

—Max Born, 1968

Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.

—Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BC

Machines do not run in order to enable men to live, but we resign ourselves to feeding men in order that they may serve the machines.

—Simone Weil, 1934