“Our entire much-praised technological progress, and civilization generally, could be compared to an axe in the hand of a pathological criminal.”

—  Albert Einstein

Unser ganzer gepriesener Fortschritt der Technik, überhaupt die Civilisation, ist der Axt in der Hand des pathologischen Verbrechers vergleichbar.
Letter to Heinrich Zangger (1917), as quoted in A Sense of the Mysterious: Science and the Human Spirit by Alan Lightman (2005), p. 110 http://books.google.com/books?id=-yo_gVxMs6MC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA110#v=onepage&q&f=false, and in Albert Einstein: A Biography by Albrecht Fölsing (1997), p. 399 http://books.google.com/books?id=Kmm0foYfvQAC&q=%22compared+to+an+axe%22#search_anchor
Sometimes paraphrased as "Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."
1910s

Original

Unser ganzer gepriesener Fortschritt der Technik, überhaupt die Civilisation, ist der Axt in der Hand des pathologischen Verbrechers vergleichbar.

1910s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativi… 1879–1955

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