“Some say that no machine conceived to kill could ever be called beautiful. Magnificent, maybe, and awesome perhaps. But not beautiful. The thing is though that in the battleship's short life of just 90 years it turned out to be a less effective killing machine than amost any other weapon of war. All they did was steam around the oceans, making the people who paid for them feel good.”

—  Jeremy Clarkson

I Know You Got Soul (2004)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Jan. 23, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Some say that no machine conceived to kill could ever be called beautiful. Magnificent, maybe, and awesome perhaps. But…" by Jeremy Clarkson?
Jeremy Clarkson photo
Jeremy Clarkson60
English broadcaster, journalist and writer 1960

Related quotes

“The question was what's happening to the individual in America? Is the individual going the way of the environment, being destroyed? In other words, were we becoming the creatures of the machine?
That was the way people thought in the '60s. Now maybe that's passé today but that's the kind of thing people thought about. Are we turning into machines? They wanted to rebel against that.
Their rebellion cannot be called a success by any means, far from it. Those of us who tried are very grateful that we tried to the degree we did. Anybody who achieved any success against the machine feels good about it.”

Charles A. Reich (1928–2019) American lawyer

The Greening of America turns 40 (2010)

Cassandra Clare photo

“Well, what kind of thing does make you feel calm and peaceful?"
"Killing demons. A good clean kill is very relaxing. The messy ones are more annoying, because you have to clean up afterward--"
"No. No killing. We're trying to make you feel peaceful. Blood, killing, war, those are all non-peaceful things. Isn't there anything else you like?"
"Weapons. I like weapons.”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

"I'm starting to think we have a problematic issue of personal philosophy here."
Jordan Kyle and Jace Herondale, pg. 27-29
The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)

Diego Rivera photo

“Your engineers are your great artists and these highways are the most beautiful things I have seen in your beautiful country…Out of them and the machine will issue the style of tomorrow.”

Diego Rivera (1886–1957) Mexican painter, muralist, Communist

On being enchanted by engineers in “Diego Rivera: A Man and His Murals” http://teachersinstitute.yale.edu/curriculum/units/1999/2/99.02.06.x.html (Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute)

“There Is Nothing More Beautiful Than Someone Who Goes Out Of Their Way To Make Life Beautiful For Others”

Alireza Kohany (1993) Musician, Actor, Entrepreneur

Source: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Business_In_Simple_Language/aiXfDwAAQBAJ

“Those who look in mankind only for their own littleness, and make them believe in that, kill more than he ever will in all his wars.”

Mary Renault book The Persian Boy

On Alexander the Great, p. 312
The Persian Boy (1972)
Context: It is better to believe in men too rashly, and regret, than believe too meanly. Men could be more than they are, if they would try for it. He has shown them that. How many have tried, because of him? Not only those I have seen; there will be men to come. Those who look in mankind only for their own littleness, and make them believe in that, kill more than he ever will in all his wars.

Socrates photo

“If there is anything beautiful other than absolute beauty, that can only be beautiful as far as it partakes of absolute beauty—and this I should say of everything. …by beauty all things become beautiful. …by greatness only great things become great and greater and greater, and by smallness the less becomes less.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Woody Guthrie photo

“THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS.”

Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) American singer-songwriter and folk musician

A message he would variously write or post on his guitar, beginning in 1941.
Variant: THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS.

Pierce Brown photo

“In war, men lose what makes them great. Their creativity. Their wisdom. Their joy. All that's left is their utility. War is not monstrous for making corpses of men so much as it is for making machines of them. And woe to those who have no use in war except to feed the machines.”

Pierce Brown book Morning Star

Source: Morning Star (2016), Ch. 25: Exodus

John Mearsheimer photo

“… after the war, he became a big proponent of the argument that chemical warfare or gas warfare was actually a more humane form of warfare than shrapnel and bombs, because he saw what all those shrapnel and bombs did to all the boys who climbed out of the trenches and tried to cross no man's land, with German machine guns and artillery on the other side, he said I'll take the gas any day. I'm not making the case for gas warfare, but the idea that getting killed by gas is, more horrible than getting ripped apart by shrapnel and bullets is not one I buy. And when I see the Obama administration putting pictures of people killed by gas up on the internet, I say "let's put pictures of the people who got killed by shrapnel up there, and lets have a debate about which pictures look worse."”

John Mearsheimer (1947) American political scientist

It won&#x27;t even be an interesting debate, getting killed by shrapnel, in my opinion is a lot more gruesome and a lot worse. <br class="br"> John Mearsheimer on America Unhinged https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwqqzh59sVo provided by the Center for the National Interest. The bold text is Mearsheimer speaking about B. H. Liddell Hart&#x27;s experience with chemical warfare, and the rest is of his opinion of it.

Michelle Tea photo

“Maybe if everyone walked around being in touch with each other's hidden pain it could work out and even be beautiful, but it doesn't feel safe to be the only compassionate person on the planet.”

Michelle Tea (1971) American writer

Source: Rose of No Man's Land

Related topics