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

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  66 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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”

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  9 Copy quote

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

  Northrop Frye

  Book, Technology, Men

  46 Copy quote

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

  Gerard K. O'Neill

  Civilization, Surface, Expanding

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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”

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  32 Copy quote

  Show source

• It has never happened in history that a nation that has won a war has been held accountable for atrocities committed in preparing for and waging that war. We intend to make this one different. What took place was the use of technological material to destroy a defenseless country. From 125,000 to 300,000 people were killed... We recognize our role in history is to bring the transgressors to justice.

  Ramsey Clark

  Country, War, Atrocities Committed

  4 Copy quote

• All small returns are noise. To transcend the noise and the risk, seek outsized returns from technological paradigms.

  George Gilder

  Risk, Noise, Return

  4 Copy quote

• My position hasn't changed over the years. Which is that online voting is a very unsafe idea and a very bad idea and something I think no technological breakthrough I can foresee can ever change.

  Avi Rubin

  Thinking, Years, Ideas

  5 Copy quote

• At what point, 2,000 years on from the life of Jesus, do we need a refresher course? Another 2,000 years? Imagine 100,000 years’ time – would the story of Moses’ burning bush amaze a generation laden with unimaginable scientific and technological wonders? Here lies religion’s biggest quandary. While science is squeezing the life out of God, how is religion going to muster a counterattack from here?

  Trevor Treharne

  Jesus, Atheist, Lying

  4 Copy quote

• Implementation of technological change must involve critics as well as advocates.

  Andy Hargreaves

  Leadership, Learning, Technological Change

  4 Copy quote

• The technological way of thinking has infected even ethics, which is supposed to be thinking about the good.

  Leon Kass

  Thinking, Way, Ethics

  10 Copy quote

• During the period of the Saturn-Apollo missions we were pilgrims in space, ranging from home in search of knowledge. Now we will become shepherds tending our technological flocks, but like the shepherds of old, we will keep our eyes fixed on the heavens.

  Jimmy Carter

  Home, Eye, Space

  United States. President (1977-1981 : Carter), Jimmy Carter (1979). “Jimmy Carter”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source