Quotes about machine (1301 quotes, page 13)

“Machines with interchangeable parts can now be constructed with great economy of effort. In spite of much complexity, they perform reliably.”

Vannevar Bush book As We May Think

As We May Think (1945)
Context: Machines with interchangeable parts can now be constructed with great economy of effort. In spite of much complexity, they perform reliably. Witness the humble typewriter, or the movie camera, or the automobile.

Effort , Parting

“Our grey technology of machines and computers will not disappear, but green technology will be moving ahead even faster.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

Progress In Religion (2000)
Context: Our grey technology of machines and computers will not disappear, but green technology will be moving ahead even faster. Green technology can be cleaner, more flexible and less wasteful, than our existing chemical industries. A great variety of manufactured objects could be grown instead of made. Green technology could supply human needs with far less damage to the natural environment. And green technology could be a great equalizer, bringing wealth to the tropical areas of the world which have most of the sunshine, most of the human population, and most of the poverty. I am saying that green technology could do all these good things, bringing wealth to the tropics, bringing economic opportunity to the villages, narrowing the gap between rich and poor. I am not saying that green technology will do all these good things. "Could" is not the same as "will". To make these good things happen, we need not only the new technology but the political and economic conditions that will give people all over the world a chance to use it. To make these things happen, we need a powerful push from ethics. We need a consensus of public opinion around the world that the existing gross inequalities in the distribution of wealth are intolerable. In reaching such a consensus, religions must play an essential role. Neither technology alone nor religion alone is powerful enough to bring social justice to human societies, but technology and religion working together might do the job.

“War has changed little in principle from the beginning of recorded history. The mechanized warfare of today is only an evolution of the time when men fought with clubs and stones, and its machines are as nothing without the men who invent them, man them and give them life.”

Ernest King (1878–1956) United States Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations

p. viii
Context: War has changed little in principle from the beginning of recorded history. The mechanized warfare of today is only an evolution of the time when men fought with clubs and stones, and its machines are as nothing without the men who invent them, man them and give them life. War is force- force to the utmost- force to make the enemy yield to our own will- to yield because they see their comrades killed and wounded- to yield because their own will to fight is broken. War is men against men. Mechanized war is still men against men, for machines are masses of inert metal without the men who control them- or destroy them.

Life , Men , War , History

“Despite the fact that the regime is trying to tighten its screws; and despite the fact that the regime is increasing its violence against its own people in an attempt to intimidate them into submission; and despite the fact that the regime is spending millions and millions of dollars financing its own war machine at the expense of hungry people or workers who haven't been paid their salaries for months, Iran continues to finance groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon and other places. And despite all of this, there's more disenchantment within the ranks in the regime. There are more indications of defections from within some of its coercive forces, all of which indicates a very delicate and fragile situation within the regime that has not been so vulnerable ever since its creation. That is, I think, an opportunity -- not only for the people, but I think in a way for the rest of the world. If we miss this opportunity and allow this regime to regroup and continue on its path, then we have with our own hands contributed to the regime’s survival and then we have to live with the consequences.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

As quoted by Felice Friedson, Iranian Crown Prince: Ahmadinejad's regime is "delicate and fragile" http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=459&page=2, August 12, 2010.
Interviews, 2010

War , People , World , Way

“One has to look out for engineers-they begin with sewing machines and end up with the atomic bomb.”

Marcel Pagnol (1895–1974) novelist, playwright and filmmaker from France

“Owners are the shareholders, living outside the process of production, idling in distant countryhouse and maybe gambling at the exchange. A shareholder has no direct connection with the work. His property does not consist in tools of him to work; with his property consists simply in pieces of paper, in shares of enterprises of which he does not even know the hereabouts. His function in society is that of a parasite. His ownership does not mean that he commands and directs the machines; this is the sole right of the director. It means only that he may claim a certain amount of money without having to work for it. The property in hand, his shares, are certificates showing his right - guaranteed by law and government, by courts and police - to participate in the profits; titles of companionship in that large Society for Exploitation of the World, that is capitalism.”

Antonie Pannekoek (1873–1960) Dutch astronomer and Marxist theorist

Source: Workers Councils (1947), Chapter One, The Task, Section 1.2

Money , Distant , Law , World

“In the present time production is dominated by capital. The capitalist, possessor of money, founded the factory, bought the machines and the raw materials, hires the workers and makes them produce goods that can be sold.”

Antonie Pannekoek (1873–1960) Dutch astronomer and Marxist theorist

Section 1.1, "Labor"
Workers Councils (1947)

Money , Time , Making love

“A book is a machine to think with, but it need not, therefore, usurp the functions either of the bellows or the locomotive.”

I. A. Richards (1893–1979) English literary critic and rhetorician

[Richards, I. A., Principles of Literary Criticism, 1924]
Principles of Literary Criticism

Thinking , Books

“War has changed little in principle from the beginning of recorded history. The mechanized warfare of today is only an evolution of the time when men fought with clubs and stones, and its machines are as nothing without the men who invent them, man them and give them life. War is force- force to the utmost- force to make the enemy yield to our own will- to yield because they see their comrades killed and wounded- to yield because their own will to fight is broken. War is men against men. Mechanized war is still men against men, for machines are masses of inert metal without the men who control them- or destroy them.”

Ernest King (1878–1956) United States Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations

Introduction, p. viii

Time , History , War , Fight

“The defensive organization of Iwo Jima was the most complete and effective yet encountered. The beaches were flanked by high terrain favorable to the defenders. Artillery, mortars, and rocket launchers were well concealed, yet could register on both beaches- in fact, on any point on the island. Observation was possible, both from Mount Suribachi at the south end and from a number of commanding hills and steep defiles sloping to the sea from all sides of the central Motoyama tableland afforded excellent natural cover and concealment, and lent themselves readily to the construction of subterranean positions to which the Japanese are addicted. Knowing the superiority of the firepower which would be brought against them by air, sea, and land, they had gone underground most effectively, while remaining ready to man their positions with mortars, machine guns, and other portable weapons the instant our troops started to attack. The defenders were dedicated to expending themselves- but expending themselves skillfully and protractedly in order to exact the uttermost toll from the attackers. Small wonder then that every step had to be won slowly by men inching forward with hand weapons, and at heavy costs. There was no other way of doing it. The skill and gallantry of our Marines in this exceptionally difficult enterprise was worthy of their best traditions and deserving of the highest commendation. This was equally true of the naval units acting in their support, especially those engaged at the hazardous beaches. American history offers no finer example of courage, ardor and efficiency.”

Ernest King (1878–1956) United States Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations

Third Report, p. 174-175
U.S. Navy at War, 1941-1945: Official Reports to the Secretary of the Navy (1946)

Courage , History , Support , Nature

“The war has been variously termed a war of production and a war of machines. Whatever else it is, so far as the United States is concerned, it is a war of logistics.”

Ernest King (1878–1956) United States Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations

First Report, p. 34
U.S. Navy at War, 1941-1945: Official Reports to the Secretary of the Navy (1946)

War

“Machines are as nothing without men. Men are as nothing without morale.”

Ernest King (1878–1956) United States Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations

Graduation address at the United States Naval Academy, 16 June 1942, as quoted by Robert A. Fitton (editor) in Leadership: Quotations From the Military Tradition (1990), p. 193
1940s

Men

“Never mind what two tons refers to. What is it? How has it entered in so definite a way into our exprerience? Two tons is the reading of the pointer when the elephant was placed on a weighing machine. Let us pass on. … And so we see that the poetry fades out of the problem, and by the time the serious application of exact science begins we are left only with pointer readings.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Source: The Nature of the Physical World (1928), Ch. 12 : Pointer Readings

Time , Reading , Problem , Way

“Aside from earning their livings, what did your people do, mostly? Games. Sports. Casinos. Loud machines that went fast. Shopping. Lawsuits blaming other for whatever went wrong. What did they believe in? Conspiracy theories. Racial superiority. Heroes with superpowers. Faith healers. God-loves-you religions. State-supported lotteries. All that enormous energy expended to conquer nothing at all, stadia full of people watching no conquering going on. For every scientist or person in government who really tried to conquer, there were a thousand people buying lottery tickets, drinking beer, watching football, and growing old.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

The Visitor in Ch. 44 : the visitor, pp. 460-461
The Visitor (2002)

Sport , God , Faith , Drink

“Friends, this body is so impermanent, fragile, unworthy of confidence, and feeble. It is so insubstantial, perishable, short-lived, painful, filled with diseases, and subject to changes. Thus, my friends, as this body is only a vessel of many sicknesses, wise men do not rely on it. This body is like a ball of foam, unable to bear any pressure. It is like a water bubble, not remaining very long. It is like a mirage, born from the appetites of the passions. It is like the trunk of the plantain tree, having no core. Alas! This body is like a machine, a nexus of bones and tendons. It is like a magical illusion, consisting of falsifications. It is like a dream, being an unreal vision. It is like a reflection, being the image of former actions. It is like an echo, being dependent on conditioning. It is like a cloud, being characterized by turbulence and dissolution. It is like a flash of lightning, being unstable, and decaying every moment. The body is ownerless, being the product of a variety of conditions.”

Vimalakirti

Chapter 2 http://www.fodian.net/world/0475_02.html
Vimalakirti Sutra, Robert Thurman's translation, 1991

Tree , Confidence , Pain , Dependency

“Urban planning is a long history of cities (and their planners) seeing, and deliberately not seeing, the people who live in them. Working in city planning makes me consider the city as an organism, as a machine for living in…”

Arkady Martine (1985) Science fiction author

On how being a city planner affects her writing in “Questions For Arkady Martine, Author Of 'A Memory Called Empire'” https://www.npr.org/2019/04/07/710356506/questions-for-arkady-martine-author-of-a-memory-called-empire in NPR (2019 Apr 7)

Making love , People , History

“Charlie Gleister had invented a time machine, but he hadn’t invented it right because it didn’t work.”

Robert Sheckley (1928–2005) American writer

Slaves of Time (p. 11)
Short fiction, The Robot Who Looked Like Me (1978)

Time

“Like a good doctor, an intelligent machine is not something we should be afraid of. At best, AI will provide us the smartest teachers, advisers, personal assistants, doctors, police officers, judges, peacekeeping forces, and first responders for search and rescue operations. It may even help us to colonize other planets. At worst, it will put us on a leash to prevent ourselves from hurting one another and destroying the planet.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

Hurt , Search , Personality , Intelligence

“Biologically inspired mechanisms will encourage deeper human-machine symbiosis as computers acquire more human intuitions in problem solving. Scientists and gamers will be working and playing side-by-side with intelligent machines as equals, not subordinates.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

Problem , Intelligence

“When we appreciate how natural it is for man to strive to be a hero, how deeply it goes in his evolutionary and organismic constitution, how openly he shows it as a child, then it is all the more curious how ignorant most of us are, consciously, of what we really want and need. In our culture anyway, especially in modern times, the heroic seems too big for us, or we too small for it. Tell a young man that he is entitled to be a hero and he will blush. We disguise our struggle by piling up figures in a bank book to reflect privately our sense of heroic worth. Or by having only a little better home in the neighborhood, a bigger car, brighter children. But underneath throbs the ache of cosmic specialness, no matter how we mask it in concerns of smaller scope. Occasionally someone admits that he takes his heroism seriously, which gives most of us a chill, as did U.S. Congressman Mendel Rivers, who fed appropriations to the military machine and said he was the most powerful man since Julius Caesar. We may shudder at the crassness of earthly heroism, of both Caesar and his imitators, but the fault is not theirs, it is in the way society sets up its hero system and in the people it allows to fill its roles. The urge to heroism is natural, and to admit it honest. For everyone to admit it would probably release such pent-up force as to be devastating to societies as they now are.”

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death

The Recasting of Some Basic Psychoanalytic Ideas
The Denial of Death (1973)

Home , Time , Children , People

“Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation.... tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

quote in Arp on Arp: poems, essays, memories, Viking, 1972, p. 231
Attributed from posthumous publications

Silence , Life

“Schools are increasingly either engaged in massive forms of pedagogical oppression and discipline or they’re basically disimagination machines — they kill the imagination of students and prepare them to work in utterly boring jobs without the slightest notion that they should resist because the implication seems to be that this is normal. They’re normalizing idiocy. They’re normalizing anti-intellectualism.”

Henry Giroux (1943) American academic

Interview with Media For Us, 2019

School , Imagination

“I stare longingly at the bare chunk of space on the desktop. There may be a keyboard stitched into the lining of my cummerbund, but without a machine to plug it into it’s about as much use as a chocolate hacksaw.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006), Chapter 12, “Power Breakfast” (p. 234)

“In the short-run, the market is a voting machine - reflecting a voter-registration test that requires only money, not intelligence or emotional stability - but in the long-run, the market is a weighing machine.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Disputed

Money , Intelligence

“When a real army is in retreat, machine guns are kept ready, and when an orderly retreat degenerates into a disorderly one, the command to fire is given, and quite rightly, too.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

"Communism and New Economic Policy",(April 1921)
1920s

“In the sea of people we are after all but a drop in the ocean, and we can administer only when we express correctly what the people are conscious of. Unless we do this the Communist Party will not lead the proletariat, the proletariat will not lead the masses, and the whole machine will collapse.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

"Communism and New Economic Policy",(April 1921)
1920s

Sea , People

“We know more about human heredity to-day than we did loo years ago. Human nature is not an unstained page. We come into the world with more than blank minds and helpless bodies. We come bringing with us machines, natures, which must be radically changed if we ever become more than mere fractions of men and women. Nearly all the woes of the world arise either from ignorance of the ways we should go or from hereditary waywardnesses which we bring into the world with us. It is as truly the function of the school to correct these inherent defects in our acting machinery and to put sign-boards in the mind telling which ways to go and which ways to avoid as it is to tutor the understanding or guide the growing body.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Ethics and Education (1912), Preface

School , Understanding , Nature , Way

“I have seen a mother mouse in a moment of peril flee from her home among the falling pieces of a cord-wood pile, and disappear under the roots of a neighbouring oak. I have seen her a little later, recovered from her initial dismay, making her way back again, clambering along among the tangled timbers, stopping now and then to look and listen, her eyes wild and anxious, and her whole little body quaking with excitement. I have seen her go among the ruins of her dwelling, take a poor little squeaking young one in her mouth, and hurry away with it to the gloomy refuge in the roots of the oak. I have watched her return again and again, each time taking in her careful teeth the tiny body of a babe, until five mouthfuls of precious pink were safely lodged within the fortress of the oak. And I could as soon believe that woman, when she saves her children from some fearful harm, is a soulless machine as think that that brave little woodmother, out there alone under the trees, snatching her darlings from the jaws of death, was a heroine without sense or feeling.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"The Common-Sense View", pp. 184–185
The Universal Kinship (1906), The Psychical Kinship

Home , Tree , Time , Making love

“For a revolution, in order to be a true revolution, must be a world revolution. To achieve that world revolution, you the children of the Yankees must lend a hand. You must vomit forth your cynicism in the streets of your cities. You must mount an unrelenting attack on everything the bastards that rule your country hold dear. You must refuse to serve in their armies, you must reject the heroin offered in their universities, you must become clogs in their productive machines.”

Abbie Hoffman book Woodstock Nation

Che's Last Letter
Woodstock Nation (1969)

World , Children , Country , Universe

“They knew what to expect when their opponents returned to power a party of great vested interests—corruption at home, aggression to cover it up abroad, the trickery of tariff juggles, the tyranny of a well-fed party machine; sentiment by the bucketful, patriotism and Imperialism by the Imperial pint, the open hand at the public Exchequer, the open door at the publichouse, dear food for the million, cheap labour for the millionaire. That was the policy which the Tory party offered them, and that was the policy which he asked them to strike at with the battle-axe of Scotland.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Kinnaird Hall, Dundee, Scotland (8 May 1908), quoted in The Times (9 May 1908), p. 14
Early career years (1898–1929)

Home , Food

“WikiLeaks and Assange have done more to expose the dark machinations and crimes of the American Empire than any other news organization. Assange, in addition to exposing atrocities and crimes committed by the United States military in our endless wars and revealing the inner workings of the Clinton campaign, made public the hacking tools used by the CIA and the National Security Agency, their surveillance programs and their interference in foreign elections…And WikiLeaks worked swiftly to save Edward Snowden, who exposed the wholesale surveillance of the American public by the government, from extradition to the United States by helping him flee from Hong Kong to Moscow…”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

"Crucifying Julian Assange" (2018)

War , Help

“In virtue of this monstrous system, the son of the worker, on entering life, finds no field which he may till, no machine which he may tend, no mine in which he may dog, without accepting to leave a great part of what he will produce to a master.”

Peter Kropotkin book The Conquest of Bread

Source: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Ch. 1 : Our Riches, p. 59

Life , Dogs , Parting

“Thousands of inventors, known and unknown, who have died in poverty, have co-operated in the invention of each of these machines which embody the genius of men.”

Peter Kropotkin book The Conquest of Bread

Source: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Ch. 1 : Our Riches, p. 57

Men

“We have not been seeing our Spaceship Earth as an integrally-designed machine which to be persistently successful must be comprehended and serviced in total.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

1960s, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963)

Success

“Society is much more than a collection of individuals acting together, even through the complex and subtle mechanisms of the free economy, for material advantage. It has an existence of its own; it thinks and feels; it looks inwards, as a community to its own members; it looks outwards as a nation, into a world populated by other societies, like or unlike itself. The Tory Party, with its deep sense of history, has always concerned itself especially with these two aspects of society, and I believe that the British people would instinctively and rightly reject a philosophy which offered them just an economic machine, however efficient and successful.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech in Bromley (24 October 1963), quoted in A Nation Not Afraid. The Thinking of Enoch Powell (B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1965), pp. 4–5
1960s

History , Success , People , Communication

“How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets?…How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?”

Smedley D. Butler book War Is a Racket

War is a racket (1935)

War , Night

“In fact, giving society cheap, abundant energy at this point would be the moral equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun. With cheap, abundant energy, the attempt clearly would be made to pave, develop, industrialize, and exploit every last bit of the planet—a trend that would inevitably lead to a collapse of the life-support systems upon which civilization depends.”

Paul R. Ehrlich (1932) American scientist and environmentalist

"An ecologist's perspective on nuclear power", Federation of American Scientists Public Interest Report vol. 28, no. 5-6 (May-June, 1975) https://fas.org/faspir/archive/1970-1981/May-June1975.pdf, page 5.

Support , Life , Dependency

“The manifesto had a paragraph on a wish and an aspiration, acknowledging that the Reserve Bank is independent and that there is no intention whatsoever to tamper or tinker with the independence of the central bank. The wish that is expressed is, that as it goes ahead with monetary policy machinations, it will keep an eye on employment.”

Cyril Ramaphosa (1952) 5th President of South Africa

Answering a question by JSE chairperson Nyembezi-Heita in Rosebank, on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos, as quoted by Carien du Plessis in Ramaphosa and Magashule contradict each other on Reserve Bank nationalisation https://www.msn.com/en-za/money/politics/ramaphosa-and-magashule-contradict-each-other-on-reserve-bank-nationalisation/ar-BBSjJd5?ocid=spartanntp, Daily Maverick (17 January 2019)

“In the early twenty-first century, perhaps the most important artistic genre is science fiction. Very few people read the latest articles in the fields of machine learning or genetic engineering. Instead, movies such as The Matrix and Her and TV series such as Westworld and Black Mirror shape how people understand the most important technological, social and economic developments of our time.”

Yuval Noah Harari book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Time , Reading , Understanding , People

“Favorable conditions for establishing a permanent camp in guerrilla warfare are inverse to the degree of productive development of a place… because everything that is favorable to human life, communications, urban and semi-urban concentrations of large numbers of people, land easily worked by machine, all these place the guerrilla fighter in a disadvantageous situation.”

Ernesto Che Guevara book Guerrilla Warfare

Source: Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Ch. I: 5. Warfare on Unfavorable Ground

Life , People , Communication

“We must not draw general conclusions from certain particular principles, though, in the main, true ones. We must not suppose that, because a man is a rational animal, he will therefore always act rationally; or, because he has such or such a predominant passion, that he will act invariably and consequentially in the pursuit of it. No. We are complicated machines: and though we have one main-spring, that gives motion to the whole, we have an infinity of little wheels, which, in their turns, retard, precipitate, and sometimes stop that motion.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

19 December 1749
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

Passion , Animals , Drawing , Spring

“Within Plaid Cymru, we have a strong internal democracy which reflects how much we rely on the party membership as a grassroots body. The side effect of this is that measures to promote women are not always at their strongest, but must be balanced out with local party control. Over the years we have also seen that this is true outside of Plaid Cymru as well, as tensions between local party democracy and central party machines have been apparent in other parties.”

Leanne Wood (1971) Welsh Plaid Cymru politician

Plaid Cymru's Leanne Wood: Legislate for more women AMs https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-21550495, BBC News, 24 February 2013
2013

Democracy , Strong , Women

“As the bourgeoisie, by means of its capital, completely monopolizes all new inventions, every new machine, instead of shortening the hours of labor and enhancing the prosperity and happiness of all, causes, on the contrary, dismissal from employment for some, reduction of wages for others and an increased and intensified state of misery for the entire proletariat.”

Johann Most (1846–1906) German-American anarchist politician, newspaper editor, and orator

The Beast of Property (1884)

Happiness

“Though not always united among themselves - one seeking to gain advantage over the other by tricks of trade, cunning in speculation and diverse machinations of competition - yet in opposition to the proletariat they stand in one united hostile phalanx.”

Johann Most (1846–1906) German-American anarchist politician, newspaper editor, and orator

The Beast of Property (1884)

Hostility

“Gamblers need action, even when the odds suck. And so they return to the ships, night after night—the slot-machine ladies, clutching their plastic cups of quarters; the shouting, hard-drinking craps-table crowd; the roulette addicts, who truly believe, all evidence to the contrary, that there is something lucky about their birthdates; the blackjack loners, with their foolproof systems that don’t work—all of them eager to resume the inexorable process of transferring their cash to whoever owns the ship.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Source: Novels, Tricky Business (2002), Chapter 2

Drink , Night , Relation ships

“Sometimes I wonder if MacKinnon has simply been driven mad by all the sick things people do to one another. I, too, recoil in pain and incomprehension whenever I hear about the latest psychopath who has shot his mother, machine-gunned his coworkers, raped his daughter, or slashed a prostitute. I notice that such men are more likely to have read the bible than pornography, but I do not hold either script responsible for their actions.”

Catharine A. MacKinnon (1946) American feminist and legal activist

"The Prime of Miss Kitty MacKinnon" http://susiebright.blogs.com/Old_Static_Site_Files/Prime_Of_Kitty_MacKinnon.pdf, by Susie Bright, East Bay Express, October 1993.

Pain , Reading , Daughters , People

“How are the internal complications, anyway? Aren’t the other branches of government getting a little suspicious about all these machinations?”

Alastair Reynolds book Redemption Ark

“Let’s just say that one or two discreet assassinations may still have to be performed,” Khouri said.
Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 27 (p. 490)

“Frick, the ruthless organizer, helped the party to seize power, supervised the police agencies to insure that it stayed in power, and chained the economy of Bohemia and Moravia to the German war machine.”

Wilhelm Frick (1877–1946) German Nazi official

Robert H. Jackson

War , Help

“They are not like the – patron’s hands or the – blessing hands of the curate – They resemble their tools, mountains, tree trunks... The time is approaching when machines will – work FOR them – Then he will have hands like his boss – WHY NOT?”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

He's on the way – HIS LIFE begins TODAY [written text in his painting 'Les mains – hommage a Majakovski', 1951 - [ Vladimir Mayakovsky was a Russian Futurist poet].
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1950's
Source: Fernand Léger – The Later Years -, catalogue ed. Nicolas Serota, published by the Trustees of the Whitechapel Art gallery, London, Prestel Verlag, 1988, p. 68

Mountain , Tree , Time

“Capitalism subordinates men to machines instead of using machines to liberate men from the burden of mechanical and repetitive work. it subordinates all social activities to the imperatives of an incessant drive for individual enrichment in terms of money, instead of gearing social life to the development of rich individualities and their social relations. The contradiction between use-value and exchange-value, inherent in every commodity, fully unfolds itself in this contradictory nature of capitalist machinery. When capitalism is not overthrown once it has created the material and social preconditions for a classless society of associated producers, this contradiction implies the possibility of a steadily increasing transformation of the forces of production into forces of destruction, in the most literal sense of the word: not only forces of destruction of wealth (crises and wars), of human wealth and human happiness, but also forces of destruction of life tout court.”

Ernest Mandel (1923–1995) Belgian economist and Marxist philosopher

Introduction to Capital. Introduction to volume 1 (1976)

Money , War , Wealth , Nature

“It is at work everywhere, functioning smoothly at times, at other times in firs and starts. It breathes, it heats, it eats. It shits and fucks. What a mistake to have ever said the id. Everywhere it is machines- real ones, not figurative ones: machines driving other machines, machines being driven by other machines, with all the necessary couplings and connections. An organ-machine is plugged into an energy-source-machine: the one produces a flow that the other interrupts The breast is a machine that produces miilk, and the mouth a machine coupled to it.”

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) French philosopher

The Desiring Machine
Anti-Oedipus Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1977)

Time

“It is at work everywhere, functioning smoothly at times, at other times in fits and starts. It breathes, it heats, it eats. It shits and fucks. What a mistake to have ever said the id. Everywhere it is machines — real ones, not figurative ones: machines driving other machines, machines being driven by other machines, with all the necessary couplings and connections.”

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) French philosopher

from Anti-oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia, p. 1

Time

“China isn’t the only authoritarian regime in the world, but it’s undoubtedly the wealthiest, strongest and most developed in machine learning and artificial intelligence. This makes Xi Jinping the most dangerous opponent of those who believe in the concept of open society.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

On China (2019)

World , Intelligence , Making love , Learning

“On this day the whole nation at all levels, in all its professions, occupations, and estates, acknowledges the dignity and blessedness of labour. On a day when in former times we heard the rattles of machine-guns and the hate-inspired songs of the class struggle and the Internationale, in this first year of Hitler’s government and the German people is assembled in unanimous, unswerving loyalty to the state, the race (Volk), and the German nation to which we all belong. Every difference is wiped away. The barriers of class hatred and the arrogance of social status that for over 50 years divided the nation from itself have been torn down. Germans of all classes, tribes (Stämme), professions, and denominations have joined hands across the barriers that separated them and have vowed henceforth to live as a community, to work and fight for the fatherland that unites us all. … The class struggle is at an end. The idea of the national community rises above the ruins of the bankrupt liberal-capitalist state. … Thus the German people marches into the future.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Speech at the first Labor Day celebration held under Nazi auspices (1 May 1933) Sheri Berman, Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancient Regime to the Present Day, New York, Oxford University Press, (2019) p. 254
1930s

Hate , Time , Future , People

““… I said about limiting factors. Well, there’s one that you can’t beat. Put steel under fifty thousand pounds per square inch pressure and it starts to flow. The metal used in this machine must have been able to withstand much greater pressure, but there was a limit beyond which it was not safe to go. At twenty miles above the planet’s surface, they had reached that limit. They had reached dead end.” <…>”

Clifford D. Simak (1904–1988) American writer, journalist

Из малой прозы

Dead

“I grew up in Kentucky so that's the land of casseroles and barbecue and meat. So when I transitioned over to an entirely plant-based diet, I wasn't sure if I was gonna survive. And I actually became like a machine. […] I just immediately started feeling like I could go kick ass and not need the recovery in between. It was mind-blowing to my teammates. […] I was about ready to retire, as I should've been, because I'm like 35 at that time. But I just kept getting better, and so they had to take me to the Olympics. We were complete underdogs as Team USA. In our semi-final ride against Australia, we were down by 1.7 seconds. No one's ever come back in team pursuit from a deficit that large. And we beat them on the line by eight one-hundredths of a second. I was 39 and a half years old when I stood on the Olympic podium. I'm still the oldest person, male or female, to even go to the Olympic Games in my event. My diet was the most powerful aspect to me being able to perform and produce for the US team at the Olympic Games.”

Dotsie Bausch (1973) cyclist

Interview in the documentary-film The Game Changers by Louie Psihoyos (2018).

Personality , Game , Time , Feeling

“Ra ra Rasputin
Lover of the Russian queen
There was a cat that really was gone
Ra ra Rasputin
Russia's greatest love machine
It was a shame how he carried on”

Boney M.

Boney M., in their 1978 song "Rasputin"

Cats , Love , Making love , Lovers

“When colored persons have been employed it was too often as machines or as manikins. There has been no disposition, generally, to get the black man's ideal or to let his individuality work by its own gravity.”

Anna J. Cooper (1858–1964) African-American author, educator, speaker and scholar

Source: A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (1892), p. 37

Personality , Color

“Sometimes my old heart is like a washing machine
It bounces around 'til my Soul comes clean
And when I'm clean and hung out to dry
I'm gonna make you laugh until you cry”

John Prine (1946–2020) American country singer/songwriter

Boundless Love (co-written with Dan Auerbach and Pat McLaughlin)
Song lyrics, The Tree of Forgiveness (2018)

Soul , Making love , Cry , Heart

“They might have their airships and machine guns, but superstition wasn’t something that went away just because you had engines and bullets.”

Alastair Reynolds book Terminal World

Source: Terminal World (2010), Chapter 11 (p. 177)

“Given the evidence at our disposal, only a fool would put any faith in the organic and the machine living harmoniously for the rest of time.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Source: House of Suns (2008), Chapter 38 (pp. 501-502)

Faith , Time , Fools

“The image of the enterprise as a place where employees can achieve personal fulfilment is therefore an essentially ideological invention. It conceals the real transformations that have taken place, namely that enterprises are replacing labour by machines, producing more and better with a decreasing percentage of the workforce previously employed, and offering privileges to a chosen elite of workers, which are accompanied by unemployment, precarious employment, de-skilling and lack of job security for the majority. The advance of technology has thus resulted in the segmentation and disintegration of the working class. An elite has been won over to collaboration with capital in the name of work ethic; the great mass of workers have become marginalized or lost their job security and serve as a reserve army for industry which wishes to be able to adjust its workforce rapidly according to fluctuations in demand.”

André Gorz (1923–2007) austrian philosopher

p. 66 https://books.google.com/books?id=WbpvDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA66
Critique of Economic Reason, 1988

Personality

“Winning is everything, but the trick is to know where the winning really is.... We're political animals, Ibram. Through us, if we do our job properly, the black and white of war is tempered. We are the interpreters of combat, the translators. We give meaning to war, subtlety, purpose even. Killing is the most abhorrent, mindless profession known to man. Our role is to fashion the killing machine of the human species into a positive force. For the Emperor's sake. For the sake of our own consciences.”

Dan Abnett (1965) British comic book writer, novelist

Commissar-General Delane Oktar:
Warhammer 40,000 Works, Gaunt's Ghosts (novel series), First & Only

Animals , War , Fashion

“Ask the world to reveal its quietude —
not the silence of machines when they are still,
but the true quiet by which birdsongs,
trees, bellworts, snails, clouds, storms
become what they are, and are nothing else.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Given (2005), Sabbaths 2001

World , Silence , Tree