Quotes about industrialisation (14 quotes)

“Russia thus interests us because it may help us to find some solution for the great problems which face the world today. It interests us specially because conditions there have not been, and are not even now, very dissimilar to conditions in India. Both are vast agricultural countries with only the beginnings of industrialisation, and both have to face poverty and illiteracy. If Russia finds a satisfactory solution for these, our work in India is made easier.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

Soviet Russia: Some Random Sketches and Impressions (1949)

World , Problem , Help , Country

“The facts are, as every Italian will admit, that the South is virtually a colony of the industrialised North.”

Norman Lewis book Naples '44

Naples '44

“The destruction of the natural world is not the result of global capitalism, industrialisation, 'Western civilisation' or any flaw in human institutions. It is a consequence of the evolutionary success of an exceptionally rapacious primate. Throughout all of history and prehistory, human advance has coincided with ecological devastation.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Human: Disseminated Primatemaia (p. 7)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

World , History , Nature , Success

“When I was studying in Bangalore, temperature would be around 21 degree and now it is 31 degree. The drastic increase in the level of temperature is due to industrialisation.”

Maneka Gandhi (1956) Indian politician and activist

On global warming, as quoted in "Nature abuse leading to global warming: Maneka Gandhi" http://www.deccanherald.com/content/245606/nature-abuse-leading-global-warming.html, Deccan Herald (28 April 2012)
2011-present

Study

“Folk-art signifies the poetical, musical and pictorial activities of those strata of the population which are uneducated and not urbanized or industrialised.”

Arnold Hauser (1892–1978) Hungarian art historian

Arnold Hauser, cited in: Bihar Tribal Research Institute (1961). Bulletin of the Bihar Tribal Research Institute. Vol. 3-4, p. 144

Art , Music

“… we are approaching a time when, in Moravec's words, 'almost all humans work to amuse other humans.' In rich countries, that time has already arrived. The old industries have been exported to the developing world. At home, new occupations have evolved, replacing those of the industrial era. Many of them satisfy needs that in the past were repressed or disguised. A thriving economy of psychotherapists, designer religions and spiritual boutiques has sprung up. Beyond that, there is an enormous grey economy of illegal industries supplying drugs and sex. The function of this new economy, legal and illegal, is to entertain and distract a population which - though it is busier than ever before - secretly suspects that it is useless. Industrialisation created the working class. Now it has made the working class obsolete. Unless it is cut short by ecological collapse, it will eventually do the same to nearly everyone.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

Non-Progress: An Irony of History (p. 160)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

World , Religion , Sex , Home

“Their minds befogged by fashionable nonsense about globalisation, western leaders believe liberal democracy is spreading unstoppably. The reality is continuing political diversity. Republics, empires, liberal and illiberal democracies, and a wide variety of authoritarian regimes will be with us for the foreseeable future. Globalisation is nothing more than the industrialisation of the planet, and increasing resource nationalism is an integral part of the process. (So is accelerating climate change, but that's another story.) As industrialisation spreads, countries that control natural resources use these resources to advance their strategic objectives.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

"Folly of the progressive fairytale," http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/09/russia The Observer (2008-09-08)

Democracy , Fashion , Nature , Reality

“If we don't stand together, we will never catch up and the industrialised nations won't care. I predict it here today as your brother.”

Pik Botha (1932–2018) South African politician

at the signing of the peace protocol in Brazzaville in 1988
Quoted in Shaun Johnson, Strange Days Indeed (1993), p. 39

“Racism is a uniquely reactionary ideology, used to justify the greatest crimes in history — the slave trade, the extermination of all original inhabitants of the Caribbean, the elimination of every native inhabitant of Tasmania, apartheid. The Holocaust was the ultimate, "industrialised" expression of racist barbarity.
Racism serves as the cutting edge of the most reactionary movements. An ideology that starts by declaring one human being inferior to another is the slope whose end is at Auschwitz. That is why I detest racism.”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

Commentary http://politics.guardian.co.uk/gla/comment/0,9236,1430185,00.html in The Guardian (4 March 2005)

History

“The combined efforts of Government policy since 1979 have been not to improve but substantially to worsen our competitive position. We have gone from a huge manufacturing surplus of £5.5 billion in 1980 to a 1986 third quarter deficit of £8 billion a year…Even with oil production continuing for some time, the current account has gone from a £3 billion surplus to a deficit predicted by the Chancellor of £1.5 billion…Sadly, the Government's great contribution, having refused to stimulate the economy by more respectable means, is a roaring consumer boom, which there is not the slightest chance of their moderating before an election. A roaring consumer boom does not, to any significant extent, mean more employment. In our competitive position, worsening under the Government, it means overwhelmingly higher imports, a still worse balance of payments position and a classic path to perdition. To have produced, after seven and a half years, the combination of total monetary muddle, a worsened competitive position, a widespread doubt in other countries as to how we are to pay our way in the future, a desperately vulnerable currency and the prospect of an unending plateau of the highest unemployment in a major country in the industrialised world is a unique achievement over which the Chancellor is an appropriate deputy acting presiding officer.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1986/nov/06/economic-policy in the House of Commons (6 November 1986)
1980s

World , Way , Effort , Chance

“If CO2 derived from modern industrialisation is the culprit for global warming, then why did the global temperature increase from 1918 to 1940, decrease from 1940 to 1976, increase from 1976 to 1998 and decrease from 1998 to the present?”

Ian Plimer book Heaven and Earth

Heaven and Earth (2009)

“It's no coincidence that an acute sensibility to the condition of animals comes up at the same time as industrialised food and concentration camp style farming.”

Gilles Dauvé (1947) French writer

"Letter on Animal Liberation" (1999)

Food , Time , Animals

“In the year 1910 we were beset by an accumulation of grave issues—rapidly becoming graver. … It was becoming evident to discerning eyes that the Party and Parliamentary system was unequal to coping with them. … The shadow of unemployment was rising ominously above the horizon. Our international rivals were forging ahead at a great rate and jeopardising our hold on the foreign trade which had contributed to the phenomenal prosperity of the previous half-century, and of which we had made such a muddled and selfish use. Our working population, crushed into dingy and mean streets, with no assurance that they would not be deprived of their daily bread by ill-health or trade fluctuations, were becoming sullen with discontent. Whilst we were growing more dependent on overseas supplies for our food, our soil was gradually going out of cultivation. The life of the countryside was wilting away and we were becoming dangerously over-industrialised. Excessive indulgence in alcoholic drinks was undermining the health and efficiency of a considerable section of the population. The Irish controversy was poisoning our relations with the United States of America. A great Constitutional struggle over the House of Lords threatened revolution at home, another threatened civil war at our doors in Ireland. Great nations were arming feverishly for an apprehended struggle into which we might be drawn by some visible or invisible ties, interests, or sympathies. Were we prepared for all the terrifying contingencies?”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

War Memoirs: Volume I (London: Odhams, 1938), p. 21.
War Memoirs

Life , War , Health , Alcohol

“I have experienced as violence the emergence of the culture of compulsory industrialised joy, which is the companion of consumerism.”

Jeremy Seabrook (1939) British writer

The Guardian, 11 December 2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1371413,00.html

Joy