Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
Most people who sneer at technology would starve to death if the engineering infrastructure were removed.
—Robert A. Heinlein (1907–88) American Science Fiction Writer
Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.
—Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American Inventor, Philosopher
The difference between a professional person and a technician is that a technician knows everything about his job except its ultimate purpose and his place in the scheme of things.
—Richard Livingstone (1880–1960) British Scholar, Educator, Academic
I claim that in losing the spinning wheel we lost our left lung. We are, therefore, suffering from galloping consumption. The restoration of the wheel arrests the progress of the fell disease.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948) Indian Hindu Political leader
Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.
—J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) English Novelist, Short Story Writer
Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.
—Alan Watts (1915–73) British-American Philosopher, Author
If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1000 MPG.
—Bill Gates (b.1955) American Businessperson, Entrepreneur, Philanthropist, Author
Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
If I were required to guess off-hand, and without collusion with higher minds, what is the bottom cause of the amazing material and intellectual advancement of the last fifty years, I should guess that it was the modern-born and previously non-existent disposition on the part of men to believe that a new idea can have value.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
A fundamental rule in technology says that whatever can be done will be done.
—Andrew Grove (1936–2016) Hungarian-born American Businessperson
The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
We must learn to balance the material wonders of technology with the spiritual demands of our human race.
—John Naisbitt American Trend Analyst
Battles, in these ages, are transacted by mechanism; with the slightest possible development of human individuality or spontaneity; men now even die, and kill one another, in an artificial manner.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. Nobody knows who invented hay, the idea of cutting grass in the autumn and storing it in large enough quantities to keep horses and cows alive through the winter. All we know is that the technology of hay was unknown to the Roman Empire but was known to every village of medieval Europe. Like many other crucially important technologies, hay emerged anonymously during the so-called Dark Ages. According to the Hay Theory of History, the invention of hay was the decisive event which moved the center of gravity of urban civilization from the Mediterranean basin to Northern and Western Europe. The Roman Empire did not need hay because in a Mediterranean climate the grass grows well enough in winter for animals to graze. North of the Alps, great cities dependent on horses and oxen for motive power could not exist without hay. So it was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York.
—Freeman Dyson (1923–2020) American Theoretical Physicist, Author
In health of mind and body, men should see with their own eyes, hear and speak without trumpets, walk on their feet, not on wheels, and work and war with their arms, not with engine-beams, nor rifles warranted to kill twenty men at a shot before you can see them.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
O misery, misery, mumble and moan!
Someone invented the telephone,
And interrupted a nation’s slumbers,
Ringing wrong but similar numbers.
—Ogden Nash (1902–71) American Writer of Sophisticated Light Verse
Computers in the future will weigh no more than 1.5 tons.
—Unknown
Space-ships and time machines are no escape from the human condition. Let Othello subject Desdemona to a lie-detector test; his jealousy will still blind him to the evidence. Let Oedipus triumph over gravity; he won’t triumph over his fate.
—Arthur Koestler (1905–83) British Writer, Journalist, Political Refugee
Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.
—Eric Hoffer (1902–83) American Philosopher, Author
Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.
—Stewart Brand (b.1938) American Writer, Editor
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner.
—Omar Bradley (1893–1981) American Military Leader
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
Theory: when you have ideas. Ideology: when ideas have you.
—Anonymous
One of the universal rules of happiness is: always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.
—Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English Fantasy Writer
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
—Richard Feynman (1918–88) American Physicist
Technology is not an image of the world but a way of operating on reality. The nihilism of technology lies not only in the fact that it is the most perfect expression of the will to power… but also in the fact that it lacks meaning.
—Octavio Paz (1914–98) Mexican Poet, Diplomat
When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.
—J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–67) American Nuclear Physicist
Technology…is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.
—C. P. Snow
The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. Whoever concerns himself with big technology, either to push it forward or to stop it, is gambling in human lives.
—Freeman Dyson (1923–2020) American Theoretical Physicist, Author
There will still be things that machines cannot do. They will not produce great art or great literature or great philosophy; they will not be able to discover the secret springs of happiness in the human heart; they will know nothing of love and friendship.
—Bertrand A. Russell (1872–1970) British Philosopher, Mathematician, Social Critic
Technology presumes there’s just one right way to do things and there never is.
—Robert M. Pirsig (b.1928) American Writer, Philosopher, Author
We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
—Carl Sagan (1934–96) American Astronomer
People nowadays like to be together not in the old-fashioned way of, say, mingling on the piazza of an Italian Renaissance city, but, instead, huddled together in traffic jams, bus queues, on escalators and so on. It’s a new kind of togetherness which may seem totally alien, but it’s the togetherness of modern technology.
—J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) English Novelist, Short Story Writer
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.
—E. F. Schumacher (1911–77) German Mathematician, Economist
The spoken word was the first technology by which man was able to let go of his environment in order to grasp it in a new way.
—Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80) Canadian Writer, Thinker, Educator
Technology: No Place for Wimps!
—Scott Adams (b.1957) American Cartoonist
There are three roads to ruin; women, gambling and technicians. The most pleasant is with women, the quickest is with gambling, but the surest is with technicians.
—Georges Pompidou (1911–74) French Statesman
A new world is not made simply by trying to forget the old. A new world is made with a new spirit, with new values. Our world may have begun that way, but today it is caricatural. Our world is a world of things…. What we dread most, in the face of the impending d
—Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist
The drive toward complex technical achievement offers a clue to why the U.S. is good at space gadgetry and bad at slum problems.
—John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) Canadian-Born American Economist
There are trivial truths and the great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.
—Niels Bohr (1885–1962) Danish Physicist
When we can drain the Ocean into mill-ponds, and bottle up the Force of Gravity, to be sold by retail, in gas jars; then may we hope to comprehend the infinitudes of man’s soul under formulas of Profit and Loss; and rule over this too, as over a patent engine, by checks, and valves, and balances.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn’t think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.
—Steve Ballmer (b.1956) American Businessperson, Philantropist
Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.
—Unknown
If you don’t know how to do something, you don’t know how to do it with a computer.
—Unknown
As industrial technology advances and enlarges, and in the process assumes greater social, economic, and political force, it carries people away from where they belong by history, culture, deeds, association and affection.
—Wendell Berry (b.1934) American Poet, Novelist, Environmentalist
Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.
—George Orwell (1903–50) English Novelist, Journalist
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Artist
Our Age of Anxiety is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s jobs with yesterday’s tools.
—Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80) Canadian Writer, Thinker, Educator