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Machines Quotes

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Machines Quotes

“W.Z. Foster {head of the American Communist Party}, who had no money, went to Moscow and came back and announced that he was building a great secret machine to undermine the American labor movement and turn it over to the Red International, owned by Lenin. He began publication of an expensive magazine and proclaimed 'a thousand secret agents in a thousand communities.'”

“Labor produces marvels for the rich but it produces deprivation for the worker. It produces palaces, but hovels for the worker. It produces beauty, but deformity for the worker. It replaces labor by machines, but it throws one section of the workers back to barbaric labor, and it turns the remainder into machines.”

Turns Work Rich Produce Labor Machines Workers Sections Palaces Deprivation Barbaric Deformity

Author:Karl Marx

“When every one is to cultivate himself into man, condemning a man to machine-like labor amounts to the same thing as slavery. If a factory-worker must tire himself to death twelve hours and more, he is cut off from becoming man. Every labor is to have the intent that the man be satisfied.... His labor is nothing taken by itself, has no object in itself, is nothing complete in itself; he labors only into another's hands, and is used (exploited) by this other.”

Ifs Men Hands Used Hours Taken Cutting Objects He Man Amount Becoming Labor Machines Slavery Workers Satisfied Factories Twelve Tire Condemning Factory Workers

Author:Max Stirner

“Machines are beneficial to the degree that they eliminate the need for labor, harmful to the degree that they eliminate the need for skill.”

Needs Science Skills Degrees Labor Machines Beneficial

Author:W. H. Auden

“I am not fighting machinery as such, but the madness of thinking that machinery saves labor. Men save labor until thousands of them are without work and die of hunger on the streets. I want to secure employment and livelihood not only to part of the human race, but for all. I will not have the enrichment of a few at the expense of the community. At present the machine is helping a small minority to live on the exploitation of the masses. The motive force of this minority is not humanity or love of their kind, but greed and avarice.”

“The machine not only does it relieve us mechanically of a crushing weight of physical and mental labor; but by the miraculous enhancing of our senses, through its powers of enlargement, penetration and exact measurement, it constantly increases the scope and clarity of our perceptions. It fulfills the dream of all living creatures by satisfying our instinctive craving for the maximum of consciousness with a minimum of effort! Having embarked upon so profitable a path, how can Mankind fail to pursue it?”

“There is not a tool, an implement, or a machine that has not resulted in a decrease in the contribution of human labor. Labor is not made permanently idle [though]; when replaced in one special category... it turns its attack against other obstacles on the main road to progress.”

Humans Made Turns Progress Special Labor Tools Machines Obstacles Contribution Categories Replaced Idle Decrease

Author:Frederic Bastiat

“The romantics were reacting against a modern culture that divided individuals from themselves (through specialisation in the division of labor), from others (the competitive market place) and from nature, which had been reduced down to a machine through technology. The antidote to such division is unity and wholeness, which means feeling at home again in the world.”

World Mean Feelings Home Culture Individual Technology Modern Labor Machines Unity Division Divided Wholeness Antidote Reacting Modern Culture Division Of Labor

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

“We believe that if men have the talent to invent new machines that put men out of work, they have the talent to put those men back to work.”

Ifs Men Believe Work Talent Labor Machines Invention Unemployment Inventing Back To Work Work Effort New Inventions New Talent

Author:John F. Kennedy

“Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor.”

May Said Weapons Labor Machines Capitalist Employed Revolt Labor And Capital

Book:Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works

Source: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works

“The financial benefits of prefabrication have never been as large as its advocates predicted, for although some labor costs can be reduced by machine manufacturing, on-site assembly of any building still depends to some extent on the handwork of skilled craftsmen.”

Stills Building Depends Cost Benefits Labor Machines Financial Site Assembly Manufacturing Craftsman

Author:Martin Filler

“We had entered an era of limitlessness, or the illusion thereof, and this in itself is a sort of wonder. My grandfather lived a life of limits, both suffered and strictly observed, in a world of limits. I learned much of that world from him and others, and then I changed; I entered the world of labor-saving machines and of limitless cheap fossil fuel. It would take me years of reading, thought, and experience to learn again that in this world limits are not only inescapable but indispensable.”

Source: Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food

“It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation which could be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.”

Ifs Men Science Used Hours Loses Labor Machines Slave Excellent Calculations Unworthy

Author:Gottfried Leibniz

“Workers must root out the idea that by keeping the results of their labors to themselves a fortune will be assured to them. Patent fees are so much wasted money. The flying machine of the future will not be born fully fledged and capable of a flight for 1,000 miles or so. Like everything else it must be evolved gradually. The first difficulty is to get a thing that will fly at all. When this is made, a full description should be published as an aid to others. Excellence of design and workmanship will always defy competition.”

“We spend more time working for our labor-saving machines than they do working for us.”

Labor Machines Saving More Time

Book:A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

“There are airmen and there are pilots: the first being part bird whose view from aloft is normal and comfortable, a creature whose brain and muscles frequently originate movements which suggest flight; and then there are pilots who regardless of their airborne time remain earth-loving bipeds forever. When these latter unfortunates, because of one urge or another, actually make an ascension, they neither anticipate nor relish the event and they drive their machines with the same graceless labor they inflict upon the family vehicle.”