The Quotes canon
Sourced and curated.
Every quote has been curated by hand and carefully authenticated.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Nikola Tesla2 quotes
When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket. — Nikola Tesla · 1926In the twenty-first century, the robot will take the place which slave labor occupied in ancient civilization. — Nikola Tesla · 1935Albert Einstein1 quote
Concern for the man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors; [..] concern for the great unsolved problems of the organization of labor and the distribution of goods in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations. — Albert Einstein · 1931Aldous Huxley1 quote
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. — Aldous Huxley · 1937Arthur C. Clarke1 quote
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. — Arthur C. Clarke · 1962Carl Sagan1 quote
For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness. What new wonders, undreamt of in our time, will we have wrought in another generation? — Carl Sagan · 1994Charles Babbage1 quote
Improvements succeeded each other so rapidly, that machines which had never been finished were abandoned in the hands of their makers, because new improvements had superseded their utility. — Charles Babbage · 1832Erasmus Darwin1 quote
Soon shall thy arm, unconquere'd steam! afar
Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car;
Or on wide-waving wings expanded bear
The flying-chariot through the fields of air. — Erasmus Darwin · 1791Guillaume Apollinaire1 quote
When a man wanted to make a machine that would walk, he created the wheel, which does not resemble a leg. — Guillaume Apollinaire · 1917H.G. Wells1 quote
The whole human memory can be, and probably in a short time will be, made accessible to every individual. — H.G. Wells · 1937Havelock Ellis1 quote
The sanitary and mechanical age we are now entering makes up for the mercy it grants to our sense of smell by the ferocity with which it assails our sense of hearing. — Havelock Ellis · 1914Henry Adams1 quote
All the steam in the world could not, like the Virgin, build Chartres. — Henry Adams · 1907Henry L. Ellsworth1 quote
The advancement of the arts from year to year taxes our credulity, and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end. — Henry L. Ellsworth · 1843John Dewey1 quote
The Great Society created by steam and electricity may be a society, but it is no community. — John Dewey · 1927John Keith Laumer1 quote
Only a free society... Can produce the technology that makes tyranny possible. — John Keith Laumer · 1967Lewis Mumford1 quote
For over against the convenience of instantaneous communication is the fact that the great economical abstractions of writing, reading, and drawing, the media of reflective thought and deliberate action, will be weakened. — Lewis Mumford · 1934Lincoln Steffens1 quote
I have seen the future; and it works. — Lincoln Steffens · 1919Malcolm1 quote
Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn't stop to think if they should. — Malcolm · 1993Martin Luther King, Jr.1 quote
The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided man. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1961Neil Armstrong1 quote
That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind. — Neil Armstrong · 1969Neil Postman1 quote
Introduce the alphabet to a culture and you change its cognitive habits, its social relations, its notions of community, history and religion. Introduce the printing press with movable type, and you do the same. Introduce speed-of-light transmission of images and you make a cultural revolution. Without a vote. Without polemics. Without guerrilla resistance. Here is ideology, pure if not serene. Here is ideology without words, and all the more powerful for their absence. All that is required to make it stick is a population that devoutly believes in the inevitability of progress. — Neil Postman · 1985Omar Bradley1 quote
The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. — Omar Bradley · 1948Stanislaw Lec1 quote
Is it progress if a cannibal uses knife and fork? — Stanislaw Lec · 1957Stewart Brand1 quote
Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road. — Stewart Brand · 1987Vernor Vinge1 quote
We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence. — Vernor Vinge · 1993Wendell Phillips1 quote
What gunpowder did for war the printing press has done for the mind. — Wendell Phillips · 1864Willa Cather1 quote
Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things. — Willa Cather · 1929