A Quote by Florian Schneider

Kraftwerk isn't a band. It's a concept. We call it 'Die Menschmaschine,' which means 'the human machine.' — © Florian Schneider
Kraftwerk isn't a band. It's a concept. We call it 'Die Menschmaschine,' which means 'the human machine.'
The concept of need is often looked upon rather unfavorably by economists, in contrast with the concept of demand. Both, however, have their own strengths and weaknesses. The need concept is criticized as being too mechanical, as denying the autonomy and individuality of the human person, and as implying that the human being is a machine which "needs" fuel in the shape of food, engine dope in the shape of medicine, and spare parts provided by the surgeon.
Prejudice of any kind implies that you are identified with the thinking mind. It means you don't see the other human being anymore, but only your own concept of that human being. To reduce the aliveness of another human being to a concept is already a form of violence.
When I first heard Kraftwerk, I thought they were an American band singing in German.
Before I joined Kraftwerk in 1971, I played guitar in a band called Spirits of Sound, whose members included (at times) amongst others singer Wolfgang Riechmann (Sky Records released his only solo album Wunderbar shortly after his death in 1978) and drummer Wolfgang Flür (later on Kraftwerk, now solo). The music of S.o.S. in the mid 60's first was the English pop and rock music of the times (Beatles, Kinks, Rolling Stones ).
Just call us the band that wouldn't die.
Analyzing a concept can (perhaps) tell you what the concept means (at least means to some philosophers), but it does not tell you anything about whether the concept is true of anything in the world.
If we must grind up human flesh and bones in the industrial machine that we call modern America, then, before God, I assert that those who consume the coal and you and I who benefit from that service, because we live in comfort, we owe protection to those men first and we owe security for their families if they die.
We are not the band. I am me. Ralf is Ralf. And Kraftwerk is a vehicle for our ideas.
The times call for courage. The times call for hard work. But if the demands are high, it is because the stakes are even higher. They are nothing less than the future of human liberty, which means the future of civilization.
I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, and the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough - I call it the one immortal blemish on the human race.
I think you have to find how the machine can work for you. That's what I mean by "attaching yourself to the machine," 'cause the machine is going to be there, and you can rage against the machine, which is cool, but there's ways that you can benefit off the machine if you're savvy enough and you're sharp enough, smart enough. We all got to live and eat.
I never understood the concept of a fluffy summer read. For me, summer reading means beaches, long train rides and layovers in foreign airports. All of which call for escaping into really long books.
Every word instantly becomes a concept precisely insofar as it is not supposed to serve as a reminder of the unique and entirely individual original experience to which it owes its origin; but rather, a word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases -- which means, purely and simply, cases which are never equal and thus altogether unequal.
Mephistopheles, the machine man, can provide us with all the means, and is thus likely to determine the aims of life as well. But of course the characteristic of Faust, which makes him eligible to be saved, is that he seeks aims that are not those of the machine.
I mean, I think I liked every band I ever played in because each band was different, each band had a different concept, and each band leader was different... different personalities and musical tastes.
We are too much in the machine world today. Even here in Tuva we've got every year more and more cars and other technologies, and of course it brings more pollution to our air, to nature. And I think the idea of the Kraftwerk song is people should not be very much mechanized or to be a machine in the world of machines. The idea is to try to find a golden middle between the world of nature and the world of machines.
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