Cogs Quotes

• Communication is a continual balancing act, juggling the conflicting needs for intimacy and independence. To survive in the world, we have to act in concert with others, but to survive as ourselves, rather than simply as cogs in a wheel, we have to act alone.

  Deborah Tannen

  Communication, Independence, Needs

  Deborah Tannen (2013). “You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation”, p.27, Harper Collins

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• It is beneath human dignity to lose one's individuality and become a mere cog in the machine.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Individuality, Machines, Dignity

  Mahatma Gandhi, Mohandas Gandhi, Homer A. Jack (2005). “The Wit and Wisdom of Gandhi”, p.134, Courier Corporation

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• A workman is not just a workman.
  A laborer is not just a laborer.
  An office worker is not just an office worker.
  They are living, breathing, important pillars on which the entire structure of our civilization is erected. They are not cogs in a mighty machine.
  They are the machine itself.

  L. Ron Hubbard

  Breathing, Civilization, Office

  L. Ron Hubbard (1976). “Scientology, a New Slant on Life”, p.130, Bridge Publications, Inc.

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• There's a huge difference between being a replaceable cog on the assembly line and being the one who is missed, the one with a unique contribution, the one who made a difference.

  Seth Godin

  Unique, Differences, Lines

  "Seth Godin: On Passion, Fighting Resistance & Being Weird". Experian Interview, www.experian.com.

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• To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.

  Aldo Leopold

  Nature, Intelligent, Tinkering

  Aldo Leopold (2012). “For the Health of the Land: Previously Unpublished Essays And Other Writings”, p.21, Island Press

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• I like being a cog in a wheel. I like being a small aspect of a much bigger thing, and I think my interest in that takes the pressure of myself.

  Charlize Theron

  Thinking, Pressure, Wheels

  Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

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• I’m worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they’re doing. I’m concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that’s handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers.

  Howard Zinn

  Teacher, Successful, Media

  "A People's History of the United States". Book by Howard Zinn, www.huffingtonpost.com. 1980.

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• A company is people … employees want to know… am I being listened to or am I a cog in the wheel? People really need to feel wanted.

  Richard Branson

  People, Needs, Want

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• When the machine grinds to a halt, the cogs themselves begin wondering about their function.

  Ken Knabb

  Machines, Wonder, Grind

  Ken Knabb (1997). “Public Secrets”

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• We're just one cog in this giant machine. You show up and look at all the other cogs like, "Wow, everyone is the best at what they do." You're in really good hands. And that frees you up to play and feel safe, and you can take chances, creatively. You can take risks. I want to show up to work and take risks. I don't ever want to play it safe.

  James Badge Dale

  Play, Hands, Risk

  Source: collider.com

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• Time and times are but cogwheels, unmatched, grinding on oblivious to one another. Occasionally - oh, very rarely! - the cogs fit; the pieces of the plot snap together momentarily and give men faint glimpses beyond the veil of this everyday blindness we call reality.

  Robert E. Howard

  Reality, Men, Giving

  Robert E. Howard (2016). “THE CTHULHU MYTHOS – Complete Collection: The Children of the Night, The Black Stone, The Thing on the Roof, The Challenge From Beyond & The Fire of Asshurbanipal: The Gateway into the Ancient Dimension of Terror Inhabited with Unspeakable Creatures, a Pantheon of Alien Extra-Dimensional Deities and Mythical Horrors Which Predate Humanity”, p.14, e-artnow

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• The individual has become a mere cog in an enormous organization of things and powers which tear from his hands all progress, spirituality, and value in order to transform them from their subjective form into the form of a purely objective life.

  Georg Simmel

  Hands, Order, Organization

  "The Metropolis and Modern Life" by Georg Simmel (1903), translated by Kurt Wolff in "The Sociology of Georg Simmel" edited by D. Weinstein, New York: Free Press, (p. 422), 1950.

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• ‎In today's materialistic world there is a risk of people becoming slaves to money, as though they were simply cogs in a huge money-making machine. This does nothing for human dignity, freedom, and genuine well-being. Wealth should serve humanity, and not the other way around.

  Dalai Lama

  People, Humanity, Risk

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• Colors must fit together as pieces in a puzzle or cogs in a wheel.

  Hans Hofmann

  Color, Together, Wheels

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• You pretend to be more eccentric than you actually are because you worry you are an interchangeable cog.

  Douglas Coupland

  Worry, Eccentric

  Douglas Coupland (1993). “Shampoo Planet”, p.203, Simon and Schuster

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• I noticed while working on Green Lantern that the actor - albeit forefront in the film, obviously, and the key focus for the audience - is kind of the smallest cog in the machine when you're shooting.

  Ryan Reynolds

  Keys, Focus, Machines

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Traditional corporations, particularly large-scale service and manufacturing businesses are organized for efficiency. Or consistency. But not joy. Joy comes from surprise and connection and humanity and transparency and new...If you fear special requests, if you staff with cogs, if you have to put it all in a manual, then the chances of amazing someone are really quite low.

  Seth Godin

  Joy, Consistency, Humanity

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• Religion, politics, society are exploiting you, and you are being conditioned by them; you are being forced in a particular direction. You are not human beings; you are mere cogs in a machine.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Suffering, Machines, Environment

  "The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti".

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• The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine.

  Theodore Kaczynski

  Long, Suffering, Cost

  The Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski (2005). “The Unabomber Manifesto: Industrial Society and Its Future”, p.5, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

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• The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?

  Aldo Leopold

  Nature, Ignorance, Animal

  Aldo Leopold (2013). “Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)”, p.557, Library of America

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• Wherever you see a man who gives someone else's corruption, someone else's prejudice as a reason for not taking action himself, you see a cog in The Machine that governs us.

  John Jay Chapman

  Men, Giving, Prejudice

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• If the land mechanism as a whole is good then every part is good, whether we understand it or not.

  Aldo Leopold

  Land, Tinkering, Conservation

  Aldo Leopold (1972). “Round River”, p.108, Oxford University Press

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• Communication is a continual balancing act, juggling the conflicting needs for intimacy and independence

  Deborah Tannen

  Communication, Independence, Needs

  Deborah Tannen (2013). “You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation”, p.27, Harper Collins

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• Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice? Let us rather call it injustice, but of a sly effective order, based entirely on cruel knowledge of the resistance of the weak, their capacity for pain, humilation and misery. Injustice sustained at the exact degree of necessary tension to turn the cogs of the huge machine-for-the-making-of-rich-men, without bursting the boiler.

  Georges Bernanos

  Pain, Powerful, Men

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• I think that very often younger writers don't appreciate how much hard work is involved in writing. The part of writing that's magic is the thinnest rind on the world of creation. Most of a writer's life is just work. It happens to be a kind of work that the writer finds fulfilling in the same way that a watchmaker can happily spend countless hours fiddling over the tiny cogs and bits of wire. ... I think the people who end up being writers are people who don't get bored doing that kind of tight focus in small areas.

  Diane Ackerman

  Hard Work, Writing, Thinking

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