
“Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.”
X, 38
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book X
Context: In contemplating thyself never include the vessel which surrounds thee, and these instruments which are attached about it. For they are like an ax, differing only in this, that they grow to the body. For indeed there is no more use in these parts without the cause which moves and checks them than in the weaver's shuttle, and the writer's pen, and the driver's whip.
“Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.”
“Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.”
12.
Meditations Divine and Moral (1664)
The Shakers.
Artemus Ward, His Book http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/eafbin2/toccer-eaf?id=Weaf482&tag=public&data=/www/data/eaf2/private/texts&part=0 (1862)
“So here the twins were laid low at Aeneas' hands,
down they crashed like lofty pine trees axed.”
V. 559–560 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)
Source: Validity of the single processor approach... (1967), p. 483