Machine Quotes - page 43

It seems to me that the notion of machine that was current in the course of the Industrial Revolution – and which we might have inherited – is a notion, essentially, of a machine without goal, it had no goal ‘of', it had a goal ‘for'. And this gradually developed into the notion of machines with goals ‘of', like thermostats, which I might begin to object to because they might compete with me. Now we've got the notion of a machine with an underspecified goal, the system that evolves. This is a new notion, nothing like the notion of machines that was current in the Industrial Revolution, absolutely nothing like it. It is, if you like, a much more biological notion, maybe I'm wrong to call such a thing a machine; I gave that label to it because I like to realise things as artifacts, but you might not call the system a machine, you might call it something else. (Gordon Pask)
If we survey a ship, what an exalted idea must we form of the ingenuity of the carpenter who framed so complicated, useful, and beautiful a machine? And what surprise must we feel, when we find him a stupid mechanic, who imitated others, and copied an art, which, through a long succession of ages, after multiplied trials, mistakes, corrections, deliberations, and controversies, had been gradually improving? Many worlds might have been botched and bungled, throughout an eternity, ere this system was struck out; much labour lost; many fruitless trials made; and a slow, but continued improvement carried on during infinite ages in the art of world-making. View quote
David Hume
On balance, the cartesian metaphor of organism as machine has proved to be a good idea. Ideas do not have to be correct in order to be good; its only necessary that, if they do fail, they do so in an interesting way. View quote
Robert Rosen
Oh you tell me that there's danger to the land you call your own, And you watch them build the war machine right beside your home, And you tell me that you're ready to go marchin' to the war, I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for? View quote
Phil Ochs
Joel groaned softly. "I-ah-I don't think I was altogether myself,” he excused. "Are you ever?” Bertrand countered. "What?” "I am always my self, even when my objurgatory circuits are cut in by some frustration-inducing outside event. But you're invariably either drunk or suffering indigestion or still half-asleep or so excited as to be manic or so downcast as to be suicidal or-” Loftily Joel broke in: "That's part of the marvel and wonder of the subjective human experience, not susceptible machine analysis.” He gulped the last of his brandy and set the glass aside. "And we are a fantastic species really, aren't we? For all our shortcomings! I mean, well-here I am talking to a machine, for pity's sake, a machine, a manufactured article! So cleverly designed, it's impossible to tell that its responses are programmed in, not the result of intelligence.”. View quote
John Brunner
No matter how bad the wicked world has hurt you, in the long run, there is something gained, and it is all for the best ... The note of hope is the only note that can help us or save us from falling to the bottom of the heap of evolution, because, largely, about all a human being is, anyway, is just a hoping machine, a working machine. View quote
Woody Guthrie
Why go to a machine when you could go to a human being? View quote
Ray Bradbury
I hope they invent a machine in which you type in the age you want to be, and it lifts and separates everything nonsurgically. View quote
Sandra Bullock
The gears of poverty, ignorance, hopelessness and low self-esteem interact to create a kind of perpetual failure machine that grinds down dreams from generation to generation. We all bear the cost of keeping it running. Illiteracy is its linchpin. View quote
Carl Sagan
You really just want to know that somebody loves you for you. Sometimes you feel like an ATM machine with a wig on it. View quote
Mariah Carey
Hollywood is a very strong machine that needs, and in... especially with female actors, fresh flesh. It's that cruel. But that's the way it is. (Antonio Banderas)
Money and credit are as much human contrivances as bicycles, and as liable to expansion and modification as any other sort of prevalent but imperfect machine. View quote
H. G. Wells
I've been accused of being a shell designer - you start with a machine and enclose it. But in many cases, the shell is essential. A locomotive without a shell would be nonfunctional. View quote
Raymond Loewy
Making movies is time-consuming and it's boring. You spend most of your time waiting between takes. It's like a big machine that moves slowly. View quote
Eddie Murphy
When I say that human beings are just gene machines, one shouldn't put too much emphasis on the word 'just.' There is a very great deal of complication, and indeed beauty in being a gene machine. View quote
Richard Dawkins
Emotionally, I was affected a lot by Rage Against the Machine, not specifically the literal intention of the words or what it was about, but the feel, the sound, those phrases that got me. View quote
Fred Durst
The ultimate aim of politics is not politics, but the activities which can be practised within the political framework of the State. Therefore an effective statement of these activities - e.g. science, art, religion - is in itself a declaration of ultimate aims around which the political means will crystallise ... a society with no values outside of politics is a machine carrying its human cargo, with no purpose in its institutions reflecting their care, eternal aspirations, loneliness, need for love. View quote
Stephen Spender
We were deep in the brush and we couldn't see the Germans and they couldn't see us. But we could hear their machine guns shooting something awful. View quote
Alvin York
No other power under heaven could bring a man out of a place like that. Men were killed on both sides of me; and I was the biggest and the most exposed of all. Over thirty machine guns were maintaining rapid fire at me, point-blank from a range of about twenty-five yards. View quote
Alvin York
He went down with three bullets in his body. That left me in command. I was right out there in the open. And those machine guns were spitting fire and cutting down the undergrowth all around me something awful. View quote
Alvin York
And now I see with eye serene; The very pulse of the machine; A being breathing thoughtful breath, A traveller between life and death. (William Wordsworth)
Art differs from nature not in its organic form, but in its human origins: in the fact that it is not God or a machine that makes a work of art, but an individual. View quote
Herbert Read
The first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control. View quote
Nick Bostrom
The Democrats are as much a part of the war machine as the Republicans. We can't let Democrats get off the hook because they're Democrats. View quote
Cindy Sheehan
When I was growing up, it was 'Communists'. Now it's 'Terrorists'. So you always have to have somebody to fight and be afraid of, so the war machine can build more bombs, guns, and bullets and everything. View quote
Cindy Sheehan