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Machines Quotes

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Machines Quotes

“the State only aims at instilling those qualities in its public by which its demands are obeyed, and its exchequer is filled. Its highest attainment is the reduction of mankind to clockwork. In its atmosphere all those finer and more delicate liberties, which require treatment and spacious expansion, inevitably dry up and perish. The State requires a taxpaying machine in which there is no hitch, an exchequer in which there is never a deficit, and a public, monotonous, obedient, colorless, spiritless, moving humbly like a flock of sheep along a straight high road between two walls.”

“I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building.”

People World I Can Government Liberty Building Internet Conscience Machines Around The World Privacy Massive Surveillance Nsa Government Spying Internet Freedom Government Surveillance

Author:Edward Snowden

“The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day's liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. 'Anything,' he thinks, 'any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose.' He does not see that since there is no difference between the mass of rich and poor, there is no question of setting the mob loose. The mob is in fact loose now, and--in the shape of rich men--is using its power to set up enormous treadmills of boredom, such as 'smart' hotels.”

Source: Down and Out in Paris and London

“Government is emphatically a machine: to the discontented a taxing machine, to the contented a machine for securing property.”

Government Liberty Machines Property

Book:The Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle

Source: The Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle

“Concentration of power in a political machine is bad; and an Established Church is only a political machine; it was invented for that; it is nursed, cradled, preserved for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and does no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scattered condition.”

Humans Doe Political Church Religious Liberty Enemy Conditions Machines Positive Atheism Concentration Splits

Book:A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Source: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

“It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some loss of the object , than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of political benevolence. The world on the whole will gain by a liberty, without which virtue cannot exist.”

Men World Whole Political Humanity Loss Liberty Virtue Objects Gains Machines Instruments Mere Leaving Free Will Cherish Benevolence American Liberty

Book:The Portable Edmund Burke

Source: The Portable Edmund Burke

“Switzerland is a land where crime is virtually unknown, yet most Swiss males are required by law to keep in their homes what amounts to a portable, personal machine gun.”

Home Law Liberty Land Crime Amount Gun Machines Males Libertarian Libertarianism Switzerland Swiss Machine Guns

Author:Tom Clancy

“What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment ... inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.”

Men Moments Age Next Hours Compassion Liberty Machines Fellows Misery Rose Endure Tyranny Rebellion Toil Bondage Fellow Man Famine Imprisonment One Hour Inhumanity Stripes Vindication

Author:Thomas Jefferson

“The angels and the devils are definitely within us, not within the machines we use.”

Use Liberty Devil Angel Machines Libertarian Libertarianism

Author:Michael Dertouzos

“To me, it doesn't matter if your scapegoats are the Jews, the homosexuals, the male sex, the Masons, the Jesuits, the Welfare Parasites, the Power Elite, the female sex, the vegetarians, or the Communist Party. To the extent that you need a scapegoat, you simply have not got your brain programmed to work as an efficient problem-solving machine.”

“Complete and accurate surveillance as a means of control is probably a practical impossibility. What is much more likely is a loss of privacy and constant inconvenience as the wrong people gain access to information, as one wastes time convincing the inquisitors that one is in fact innocent, or as one struggles to untangle the errors of the errant machine.”

Source: Technological Man: The Myth and the Reality