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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• 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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• 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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• There is no escaping from ourselves. The human dilemma is as it has always been, and we solve nothing fundamental by cloaking ourselves in technological glory.

  Neil Postman

  Escaping, Fundamentals, Glory

  "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business". Book by Neil Postman, 1985.

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

  Northrop Frye

  Book, Technology, Men

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• The techniques of being an Internet visionary are just like those of lower-tech fortunetellers through the ages. A technological visionary must tell people what they want to hear, because your company's stock won't rise if you spout an unpopular vision to analysts.

  Nathan Myhrvold

  People, Vision, Age

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• Technological 'revolutions' don't really overthrow anything - they simply append a new and dynamic market to that which went before.

  Nathan Myhrvold

  Revolution

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• Despite our high rate of unemployment, 300,000 jobs go unfilled largely because many of the unemployed lack the skills needed today as a result of technological progress.

  Kim Campbell

  Jobs, Skills, Progress

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• It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics. Why? Because discrimination, poverty and ignorance restrict growth. We know that investments in education, infrastructure and scientific and technological research increase growth. They increase good jobs, and they create new wealth for all of us.

  William J. Clinton

  Jobs, Ignorance, Opportunity

  "Transcript of Bill Clinton's Speech to the Democratic National Convention". www.nytimes.com. September 5, 2012.

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• When we look at modern man, we have to face the fact...that modern man suffers from a kind of poverty of the spirit, which stands in glaring contrast to his scientific and technological abundance; We've learned to fly the air like birds, we've learned to swim the seas like fish, and yet we haven't learned to walk the Earth as brothers and sisters.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Wisdom, Brother, Anger

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• Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Science, May, Lasts

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• Our Western society is showing its technological muscles in ever more threatening ways, but the experience of fear, anxiety and even despair has increased in equal proportion. Indeed, the paradox is that the powerful giants feel as powerless as a new-born babe.

  Henri Nouwen

  Powerful, Anxiety, Despair

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