Wendell Berry Quotes

Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.

Any mechanical invention whatsoever has been more harmful to humanity than a century of war.

The most important and urgent problems of the technology of today are no longer the satisfactions of the primary needs or of archetypal wishes, but the reparation of the evils and damages by the technology of yesterday.

If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner.

A world technology means either a world government or world suicide.

The combination of hatred and technology is the greatest danger threatening mankind.

The machines, which mark the triumph of science, become, by reason of the antithetic conditions of the social plexus, instruments which impoverish millions and millions of artisans and free peasants.

Man has mounted science, and is now run away with. I firmly believe that before many centuries more, science will be the master of men. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Someday science may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide, by blowing up the world.

With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there is the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, … he’s sure he can control the demon. But it doesn’t work out.

Certainly science, because of its ability to increase our capacities to do things, raises terrible risks for us all. If it were possible to undiscover nuclear fission, I would be very happy to undiscover it, because of the risks that it puts us all under.

In any discussion of technology, you hear the same argument: You can't turn the clock back and you can't put the genie back in the bottle. Maybe not. But there are steps we can take to limit the social harm caused by this industry, just like we do with others.

Every technology company should have a red button somewhere in the headquarters where, if they realize they've caused more societal harm than they expected and done more harm than good, they press the button, and the company dissolves instantly.

There are actual communication systems being built to enable eye surgeons to get inside the eye, and vascular surgeons to get inside the arteries. You could see a social reaction in which people would want to regulate this technology because they are threatened by it, and thereby cause a lot of harm. There are several scenarios that are happening at once. The other scenario is that the Japanese are going for this in a big way.

I am certain that a Sewing Machine would relieve as much human suffering as a hundred Lunatic Asylums, and possibly a good deal more.

The car as we know it is on the way out. To a large extent, I deplore its passing, for as a basically old-fashioned machine, it enshrines a basically old-fashioned idea: freedom.

I have always looked on my businesses not just as money-making machines, but as adventures that can, I hope, make people better off.

The danger of computers becoming like humans is not as great as the danger of humans becoming like computers.

Paintings are too hard. The things I want to show are mechanical. Machines have less problems. I'd like to be a machine, wouldn't you?

If India becomes the slave of the machine, then, I say, heaven save the world.

As machines get to be more and more like men, men will come to be more like machines.

Like our bodies and like our desires, the machines we have devised are possessed of a heart which is slowly reduced to embers.

Technological civilizations don't last long. You're all right until you get a printing press. Then a race starts between technology and common sense. And maybe technology always wins.

The complicated engines manufactured by men demand, if one really wants to use them, much calm. Ever since our love for machines replaced the love we used to have for our fellow man, catastrophes proceed to increase.

In reality, moral rules are directions for running the human machine. Every moral rule is there to prevent a breakdown, or a strain, or a friction, in the running of that machine. That is why these rules at first seem to be constantly interfering with our natural inclinations.

They build machines they can't control, and bury the waste in a great big hole.