Technological Quotes

• More and more I come to value charity and love of one's fellow being above everything else...All our lauded technological progress-our very civilization-is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal.

  Albert Einstein

  Love, Hands, Civilization

  Albert Einstein (2013). “Albert Einstein, The Human Side: Glimpses from His Archives”, p.88, Princeton University Press

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• We are in the middle of the most transforming technological event since the capture of fire.

  John Perry Barlow

  Fire, Events, Middle

  "alt.fans" by Gregory Benford, reason.com. January 1996.

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• Our entire much-praised technological progress, and civilization generally, could be compared to an axe in the hand of a pathological criminal.

  Albert Einstein

  Love, Life, Motivational

  Letter to Heinrich Zangger (1917), as quoted in "Albert Einstein: A Biography" by Albrecht Fölsing, (p. 399), 1997.

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• The Internet, like the steam engine, is a technological breakthrough that changed the world.

  Peter Singer

  World, Internet, Steam Engines

  "The unknown promise of internet freedom". www.theguardian.com. April 4, 2010.

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• Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

  Aldous Huxley

  Mean, Technology, Progress

  Aldous Huxley (1937). “Ends and Means: An Inquiry Into the Nature of Ideals and Into the Methods Employed for Their Realization”, p.9, Transaction Publishers

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• All of the biggest technological inventions created by man - the airplane, the automobile, the computer - says little about his intelligence, but speaks volumes about his laziness.

  Mark Kennedy

  Airplane, Technology, Men

  "Beer, Boxers, Batteries, And Bodily Noises". Book by Stuart Kantor, p. 39, 2004.

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• Innovation - the heart of technological change - is fundamentally a learning process.

  Peter Dicken

  Heart, Technological Change, Innovation

  Peter Dicken (2015). “Global Shift: Mapping the Changing Contours of the World Economy”, p.106, Guilford Publications

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• There is a demon in technology. It was put there by man and man will have to exorcise it before technological civilization can achieve the eighteenth-century ideal of humane civilized life.

  Rene Dubos

  Technology, Men, Civilization

  "A God Within". Book by René Dubos, 1972.

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• At present, there can be little doubt that the whole of mankind is in mortal danger, not because we are short of scientific and technological know-how, but because we tend to use it destructively, without wisdom. More education can help us only if produces more wisdom.

  E. F. Schumacher

  Doubt, Growth, Use

  E.F. Schumacher (1975). “Small is Beautiful”

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• Western society has accepted as unquestionable a technological imperative that is quite as arbitrary as the most primitive taboo: not merely the duty to foster invention and constantly to create technological novelties, but equally the duty to surrender to these novelties unconditionally, just because they are offered, without respect to their human consequences.

  Lewis Mumford

  Technology, Arbitrary, Novelty

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• During my eighty-seven years I have witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions. But none of them has done away with the need for character in the individual or the ability to think.

  Bernard Baruch

  Character, Technology, Thinking

  Bernard Mannes Baruch (1970). “Baruch: My own story”

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• Is a planetary surface the right place for an expanding technological civilization?

  Gerard K. O'Neill

  Civilization, Surface, Expanding

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• The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book.

  Northrop Frye

  Book, Technology, Men

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• It is a mistake to suppose that any technological innovation has a one-sided effect. Every technology is both a burden and a blessing; not either-or, but this-and-that.

  Neil Postman

  Mistake, Technology, Blessing

  Neil Postman (2011). “Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology”, p.14, Vintage

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• There is a very real danger that we will kill everything on this planet now that we have the technological power to do so.

  Stephen Hawking

  Real, Politics, Danger

  "A Dazzling Night in D.C. With a Brilliant Thinker" by David Perlman, www.sfgate.com. March 20, 1998.

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• I believe deeply in a common humanity. The black man belongs to the family of man. One part of that family is out of control - like a virus or cancer - and that is the white man. He and his technological society are bent on destroying the world. Everywhere the white man has gone with his empire, he has destroyed people, races, societies, cultures, and in the course of it, has sterilized himself. He is completely the mechanical man: without heart, without soul. He is the Tin Man of The Wizard of Oz. But I don't believe that all the white people in the world are no good.

  Margaret Walker

  Cancer, Believe, Heart

  Margaret Walker, Maryemma Graham (2002). “Conversations with Margaret Walker”, p.3, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance- and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way.

  Ayn Rand

  Country, Jobs, Moving

  "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal". Book by Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden, 1966.

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• Such manifestations I account as representing the creative leadership of the new forces of thought and appreciation which attend changes in technological pattern and therefore of the pattern of human relationships in society.

  John Grierson

  Leadership, Appreciation, Creative

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• Big companies are looking closer term, and even the most technological companies spend less than 1% of sales on research. Startups have suffered the burst bubble.

  Nicholas Negroponte

  Research, Bigs, Term

  "Online Extra: Q&A With MIT's Nicholas Negroponte". Interview with Stephen Baker, www.bloomberg.com. June 21, 2004.

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• Looking back now on the whole sexual scene we can see that our species has remained much more loyal to its basic biological urges than we might at first imagine. Its primate sexual system with carnivore modifications has survived all the fantastic technological advances remarkably well.

  Desmond Morris

  Sex, Loyal, Might

  Desmond Morris (1986). “The illustrated naked ape: a zoologist's study of the human animal”, Crown Pub

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• As in any technological revolution, there will be winners and losers. On balance, everyone will come out ahead, although there will be particular companies that will not be able to cope with a new environment.

  Ralph Merkle

  Balance, Able, Revolution

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• We must work passionately and indefatigably to bridge the gulf between our scientific progress and our moral progress. One of the great problems of mankind is that we suffer from a poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Bridges, Suffering, Progress

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “"In a Single Garment of Destiny": A Global Vision of Justice”, p.19, Beacon Press

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• Modern man's capacity for destruction is quixotic evidence of humanity's capacity for reconstruction. The powerful technological agents we have unleashed against the environment include many of the agents we require for its reconstruction.

  George Will

  Powerful, Men, Humanity

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• As far as the U.S. economy is concerned, I always believe that the U.S. economy is solidly based, not only in a material sense, but more importantly, the United States has the strength of scientific and technological talent, and managerial expertise.

  Wen Jiabao

  Believe, United States, Talent

  "CNN Sunday Morning" with T.J. Holmes, www.cnn.com. October 3, 2010.

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• It is a world completely rotten with wealth, power, senility, indifference, puritanism and mental hygiene, poverty and waste, technological futility and aimless violence, and yet I cannot help but feel it has about it something of the dawning of the universe. Perhaps because the entire world continues to dream of New York, even as New York dominates and exploits it.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Dream, New York, Hygiene

  Jean Baudrillard (1989). “America”, p.23, Verso

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