“It is better to go to defeat with free will than to live in a meaningless security as a cog in a machine.”
Source: The Foundation series (1951–1993), Foundation’s Edge (1982), Chapter 19 “Decision” section 7, p. 404
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Isaac Asimov 303
American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston Uni… 1920–1992Related quotes
“Human beings were behaving as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine.”
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
Written by Joseph Goebbels and Mjölnir, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher, 1932).Translated as “Those Damned Nazis: Why a Workers Party?
“Those Damn Nazis: Why Are We a Workers’ Party?” https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/haken32.htm written by Joseph Goebbels and Mjölnir, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken, Nazi propaganda pamphlet (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher, 1932)
1930s
As We May Think (1945)
“We are all just cogs in a machine, doing what we were always meant to do, with no actual volition.”
Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 122
Quoted in "Unspeakable: Facing Up to Evil in an Age of Genocide and Terror" - Page 92 - by Os Guinness - 2005.
“Calamitous collapse is better than mediocre defeat!”
Quoted in The London Evening Standard (9 August 2001).
“An honorable defeat is better than a dishonorable victory.”
Speech http://books.google.com/books?id=Ihs8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA407&dq=honorable+defeat (13 September 1844), Buffalo, New York, quoted in the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser (14 September 1844). Fillmore had lost the Whig nomination for governor of New York. The newspaper summary was: "He entreated them to enter the contest with zeal and enthusiasm; but as they valued the sacredness of their cause, and the stability of their principles, to resort to no unfair means: that an honorable defeat was better than a dishonorable victory."
1840s
Cited in: Andrew Razeghi (2008), The Riddle: Where Ideas Come From and How to Have Better Ones. p. 104