Isabel Paterson: Energy

Isabel Paterson was author and editor. Explore interesting quotes on energy.
Isabel Paterson: 34 quotes1 like

“More and more of the flow was diverted from production into the political mechanism. Whatever elements in motion compose a stream of energy, enough must go through to complete the circuit and renew production. Water running in an aqueduct to turn a millwheel is a stream of energy; or electricity going through insulated wires; or goods in process from raw materials to finished product and conveyed by a system of transport. If the water channel is pierced with many small openings en route; or electricity taken off by more and more outlets; or the goods expropiated piecemeal at each stage of the process, finally not enough will go through for maintenance of the system. In the energy system comprised in an exchange of goods, the producers and processors have to get back enough to enable them to keep on producing and working up the raw materials and to provide transport…”

Isabel Paterson

Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 39

“An army is a diversion of energy from the productive life of a nation.”

Isabel Paterson

Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 30

“Money is indispensable to a long-circuit heavy load energy system. It must be used when a sufficient surplus is being produced to allow a margin for exchange, and cost of transport, over a considerable distance. Money represents a storage battery when idle, and a generalized mode of the conversion of energy when it is in motion, with a function of equating time and space.”

Isabel Paterson

Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 32