A Quote by William S. Burroughs

If all individuals were conditioned to machine efficiency in the performance of their duties there would have to be at least one person outside the machine to give the necessary orders; if the machine absorbed or eliminated all those outside the machine, the machine will slow down and stop forever.

William S. Burroughs

Quote Topics

At Least One Conditioned Down Down And Duties Efficiency Eliminated Forever Give Individuals Least Machine Necessary Orders Outside Performance Person Slow Slow Down Stop Those Were Will Would

Quote Author

William S. Burroughs
American - Writer
February 5, 1914 - August 2, 1997

Who is all-powerful in the world? Who is most dreadful in the world? The machine. Who is most fair, most wealthy, and all-wise? The machine. What is the earth? A machine. What is the sky? A machine. What is man? A machine. A machine.

Leonid Andreyev

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.

Ice Cube

My approach is to start from the straightforward principle that our body is a machine. A very complicated machine, but none the less a machine, and it can be subjected to maintenance and repair in the same way as a simple machine, like a car.

Aubrey de Grey

The urgent need today is to develop and support leaders on every level of government who are independent of the bossism of every political machine - the big-city machine, the liberal Democrat machine, and the Republican kingmaker machine.

Phyllis Schlafly

We will continue to live in a form in which we become cyborg. Either we download our information to a machine or we incorporate so many machine parts that we don't know where we end and the machine begins.

Sherry Turkle

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

Thomas Carlyle

In the Machine Age, the company itself became a machine - a machine for making money.

Peter Senge

You insist that there is something a machine cannot do. If you tell me precisely what it is a machine cannot do, then I can always make a machine which will do just that.

John von Neumann

Nature is a machine. The family is a machine. The life cycle is like a machine.

Ray Dalio

Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a taxing-machine; to the contented, a machine for securing property. Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.

Thomas Carlyle

What can we do to create shared prosperity? The answer is not to try to slow down technology. Instead of racing against the machine, we need to learn to race with the machine.

Erik Brynjolfsson

f the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go; perchance it will wear smooth - certainly the machine will wear out... but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

Henry David Thoreau

My dad used to say, 'You have to become part of the machine to beat the machine,' and there's some validity in it. But honestly, even when I'm inside the machine, you still see me. I stick out a little bit.

Michael Shannon

An actress is not a machine, but they treat you like a machine. A money machine.

Marilyn Monroe

My own guess is that quite quickly the machine intelligence will start dreaming machine dreams and thinking machine thoughts, both of which would totally incomprehensible to us. This would then lead to each species, we and the machines, moving off on to its own separate life trajectory.