#Technology Quotes

“The machine unmakes the man. Now that the machine is so perfect, the engineer is nobody.”

“Railroad iron is a magician's rod, in its power to evoke the sleeping energies of land and water.”

“Man moves in all modes, by legs of horses, by wings of winds, by steam, by gas of balloon, by electricity, and stands on tiptoe threatening to hunt the eagle in his own element.”

“Another success is the post-office, with its educating energy augmented by cheapness and guarded by a certain religious sentimentin mankind; so that the power of a wafer or a drop of wax or gluten to guard a letter, as it flies over sea over land and comes to its address as if a battalion of artillery brought it, I look upon as a fine meter of civilization.”

“It may be that ... when the advance of destructive weapons enables everyone to kill everybody else nobody will want to kill anyone at all. [Referring to the hydrogen bomb.]”

“Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement.”

“The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.”

“I am all for your using machines, but do not let them use you.”

“Science bestowed immense new powers on man, and at the same time, created conditions which were largely beyond his comprehension.”

“The tank was originally invented to clear a way for the infantry in the teeth of machine-gun fire. Now it is the infantry who will have to clear a way for the tanks.”

“Science has given to this generation the means of unlimited disaster or of unlimited progress. There will remain the greater task of directing knowledge lastingly towards the purpose of peace and human good.”

“Air power may either end war or end civilization.”

“We know enough to be sure that the scientific achievements of the next fifty years will be far greater, more rapid, and more surprising, than those we have already experienced. ... Wireless telephones and television, following naturally upon the their present path of development, would enable their owner to connect up to any room similarly equipped and hear and take part in the conversation as well as if he put his head in through the window.”

“This revelation of the secrets of nature, long mercifully withheld from man, should arouse the most solemn reflections in the mind and conscience of every human being capable of comprehension. We must indeed pray that these awful agencies will be made to conduce to peace among the nations, and that instead of wreaking measureless havoc upon the entire globe, may become a perennial fountain of world prosperity.”

“We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.”

“The Dark Ages may return-the Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of Science; and what might now shower immeasureable material blessings upon mankind may even bring about its total destruction. Beware! I say. Time may be short.Referring to the discovery of atomic energy.”

“Science unfolded her treasures and her secrets to the desperate demands of men, and placed in their hands agencies and apparatus almost decisive in their character. Reflecting on the outcome of World War I, and an ominous future.”

“The country has gone sane and got back to horses.”

“Coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power.”

“Take Wrigley's Chewing Gum. I don't think the Internet is going to change how people chew gum.”

“I haven't seen a tractor working all day. The country has gone sane and got back to horses. Farmers all look worse, but they feel better.”

“There will never be a time when the old horse is not superior to any auto ever made.”

“Everybody who works in the computer industry is in an industry that didn't exist twenty-five years ago. We are talking on cell phones, and there were no such things. All the people who work for Nextel and so on, those are lost jobs that became found jobs. We are in a constant state of changing, and there are numerous opportunities in a time like this, but people are still going back to the fear.”

“It is a curious thing that the more the world shrinks because of electronic communications, the more limitless becomes the province of the storytelling entertainer.”

“Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is very elementary, and ought to be substituted for some ingenious invention which should be able to give vent to at least six coherent sentences at once.”

“[W]e pity our fathers for dying before steam and galvanism, sulphuric ether and ocean telegraphs, photograph and spectrograph arrived, as cheated out of their human estate.”

“Without electricity, the air would rot.”

“More than the diamond Koh-i-noor, which glitters among their crown jewels, they prize the dull pebble which is wiser than a man, whose poles turn themselves to the poles of the world, and whose axis is parallel to the axis of the world. Now, their toys are steam and galvanism.”

“The introduction of so powerful an agent as steam [to a carriage on wheels] will make a great change in the situation of man.”

“I really believe we in the music industry can work together to find a way to bond technology with integrity and just really hope we can teach the younger generation the value of investment in music rather than the ephemeral consumption of it.”

“letters are venerable; and the telephone valiant, for the journey is a lonely one, and if bound together by notes and telephones we went in company, perhaps - who knows? - we might talk by the way.”

“I like the app where you can make your own memes. I make memes all the time and send them to my friends.”

“You can't be in love with a Google search.”

“I believe, sir, in all the progress. Air navigation is the result of the oceanic navigation: from water the human has to pass in the air. Everywhere where creation will be breathable to him, the human will penetrate into the creation. Our only limit is life.”

“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”

“Golf Media is basically my brain in one place. It does just about everything except cure asthma. If you find an app that cures asthma, definitely let me know.”

“I tweet early in the morning when I wake up or late at night just to let you know that I have a show or what's on my mind, and that's it. I hate Snapchat and all of that. It's making kids so stupid.”

“It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.”

“In creating technology for ourselves we created it for the world.”

“Fooling around with alternating currents is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever. It's too dangerous . . . it could kill a man as quick as a bolt of lightning. Direct current is safe.”

“We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.”

“I have always consistently opposed high-tension and alternating systems of electric lighting...not only on account of danger, but because of their general unreliability and unsuitability for any general system of distribution.”

“Books will soon be obsolete in the schools... Our school system will be completely changed in the next ten years.”

“Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge. Remedies from chemicals will never stand in favor compared with the products of nature, the living cell of the plant, the final result of the rays of the sun, the mother of all life.”

“I have determined that there is no market for talking pictures”

“Radio is just a fashion contrivance that will soon die out. It is obvious that there never will be invented a proper receiver!”

“The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite.”

“I have a fax machine with "fax waiting".”

“There was a power outage at a department store yesterday. Twenty people were trapped on the escalators.”

“I was going to tape some records onto a cassette, but I got the wires backwards. I erased the all of the records. When I returned them to my friend, he said, "Hey, these records are all blank."”