“Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them; more men are daily bound down as slaves to tend them, more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life.”
Darwin Among the Machines
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part III - The Germs of Erewhon and of Life and Habit
Context: Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them; more men are daily bound down as slaves to tend them, more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life. The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question.
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Samuel Butler 232
novelist 1835–1902Related quotes

“It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day.”
Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters. It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day.

"Pass the Bread", baccalaureate address at Hamilton College (20 May 2006), as quoted in Moyers on Democracy (2008), p. 385<!-- italics in source -->
Context: All my life I've prayed the Lord's Prayer, but I've never prayed, "Give me this day my daily bread." It is always, "Give us this day our daily bread." Bread and life are shared realities. They do not happen in isolation. Civilization is an unnatural act. We have to make it happen, you and I, together with all the other strangers.

Source: Epigrams, p. 364
Source: Behrooz Wolf (aka The Proteus Trilogy), Proteus In The Underworld (1995), Chapter 2 (p. 11)