100+ Quotes about Machines for Human Progress

Quotes about machines: The general consensus is that machines are going to replace humans in many jobs. From the carpenter to the nurse, there are certain jobs that will always be done by a machine. But as technology continues to improve, we’re seeing more and more human jobs challenged and even eliminated by technology. Machines like robots can easily do the job of a skilled worker, but they also come with some of their own flaws. As they become more sophisticated and smarter, what’s next?

If you haven’t been following the news, you might have heard that there is no such thing as a machine. This was perhaps the most perplexing statement to me as a machine is the creation of man. I wondered how such a headstrong statement could be true, so I did a bit of research. As it turns out, machines are not machines at all. They are very complex systems that rely on an incredible number of interconnected and constantly changing parts. Machines are simply systems that are constructed to be reevaluated and adapted over time to better serve their purpose.

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Quotes about Machines

The machine enslaves, the hand sets free. – Lanza del Vasto. Quotes about machines!

Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert. – Donna J. Haraway

Machines have altered our way of life, but not our instincts. Consequently, there is maladjustment. – Bertrand Russell

The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them. – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

To curb the machine and limit art to handicraft is a denial of opportunity. – Lewis Mumford. Quotes about machines!

The machines men are so intent on making have carried them very far from the old sweet things. – Sherwood Anderson

You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steam-roller will not plant flowers. – Walter Lippmann

Machines were devised not to do a man out of a job, but to take the heavy labor from man’s back and place it on the broad back of the machine. – Henry Ford

No machine will ever truly fully figure the brain out, because the brain’s performance is constantly altered or otherwise constrained by this inanimate, rogue artifact you can’t control, namely, speech. – Tom Wolfe

Machines were mice and men were lions once upon a time. Now that it’s the opposite, it’s twice upon a time. – Moondog

Machines were, it may be said, weapons employed by capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor. – Karl Marx. Quotes about machines!

Quotes about Machines

The arithmetical machine produces effects that approach closer to thought than all the actions of animals. But it does nothing that would enable us to attribute will to it, as to the animals. – Blaise Pascal

Quotes about Machines Replacing Man

For a machine to run smoothly and predictably, its parts must be standard and hence replaceable, features which contribute, respectively, to modern depersonalization and anxiety. – Charles Eisenstein

If you need a machine and don’t buy it, then you will ultimately find that you have paid for it and don’t have it. – Clayton Christensen. Quotes about machines!

Some days I am the flower beneath the machine. The machine rolls slowly on, blocking the sun without a care for what it tramples beneath. – Craig Stone

The United States has its own propaganda, but it’s very effective because people don’t realize that it’s propaganda. It’s subtle, but it’s a much stronger propaganda machine than the Nazis had, and it’s funded in a different way. – Crispin Glover

It’s hard to guess how smart the machines are, but a good rule of thumb is that they’re always smarter than you think. – Daniel H. Wilson. Quotes about machines!

Choose wisely, then eat in moderation. When I know I’m going to Mom’s for dinner, I throw an extra 20 minutes on the cardio machine so I can be ready to eat. – Danny Pino

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Quotes about Machines Taking Over the World

Machines are neither Republicans nor Democrats and therefore can never be consciously or even unconsciously biased. – James Baker

To curb the machine and limit art to handicraft is a denial of opportunity. – Lewis Mumford

Machines are beneficial to the degree that they eliminate the need for labor, harmful to the degree that they eliminate the need for skill. – W. H. Auden

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men, but no machine can do the work of one extraordinary man. – Croft M. Pentz

People are more difficult to work with than machines. And when you break a person, he can’t be fixed. – Rick Riordan

The first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man needs to make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.Nick Bostrom

Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert. – Donna J. Haraway. Quotes about machines!

It is the duty of machines and those who design them to understand people. It is not our duty to understand the arbitrary, meaningless dictates of machines. – Donald A. Norman

As machines take over the decision-making that saves lives, we are left with fewer chances to save lives later. – Greg Gutfeld

Machines can only find what ignorant men have programmed them to find. – Paul Anderson. Quotes about machines!

Machine does not control the mind of man, though it affects the mind of man; it is the mind of man that can and should control the machine. – Hilaire Belloc

If a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be intelligent. – Alan Turing. Quotes about machines!

A machine is more blameless, more sinless even than any animal. We have no intentions whatsoever but our own. – Ursula K. Le Guin

We control the machine. At one point the machine controlled us. – Karim Rashid. Quotes about machines!

Machines can certainly solve problems, store information, correlate, and play games – but not with pleasure. – Leo Rosten

It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are. – Clive James Machinery is the chief symbol of modern civilization; it represents a great sin. – Mahatma Gandhi

Progress is made by the improvement of people, not the improvement of machines. – Adrian Tchaikovsky. Quotes about machines!

Quotes about Machines

China has legally purchased high performance computers, advanced machine tools, and semiconductor-manufacturing equipment from several American companies. – Charles Bass

My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts. – Charles Darwin. Quotes about machines!

We have reason not to be afraid of the machine, for there is always constructive change, the enemy of machines, making them change to fit new conditions. – Charles Kettering

Everyone has a time machine. Everyone *is* a time machine. It’s just that most people’s time machines are broken. The strangest and hardest kind of time travel is the unaided kind. People get stuck, people get looped. People get trapped. But we are all time machines. – Charles Yu

A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the The Wall! – Che Guevara

Truly what the Emmys are about is the machine behind them, and Oscars are the same way, where if you have a big enough machine behind you, you get nominated, because truly how many of the best performances actually win…not many. – Christopher Judge

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Quotes about Machines and Technology

Machine learning is the term you hear a lot these days when it comes to machine learning. Machine learning is the process of training a computer to learn by automatically analyzing data, and then predicting results based off that data. Machine learning is a very powerful tool in today’s world as it can be used for everything from improvement of machine intelligence, to creating new products and services and even entertainment.

Our technology, our machines, is part of our humanity. We created them to extend ourselves, and that is what is unique about human beings. – Ray Kurzweil

I have a time machine at home. It only goes forward at regular speed. – Demetri Martin

Vacuuming is great. I do the laundry. I love washing machines. I’m the maid in my house. – Denis Leary. Quotes about machines!

It’s great to just disappear, grab a suitcase, switch the answering machine on and just go somewhere else. – Dido Armstrong. Quotes about machines!

If the machines can take the drudgery out of it and just leave us with the joy of drawing, then that’s the best of both worlds – and I’ll use those computers! – Don Bluth

Some records with drum machines on them sound phony and plastic. It all depends on how you use the tools. – Don Henley

The poem, in a sense, is no more or less than a little machine for remembering itself … Poetry is therefore primarily a commemorative act. – Don Paterson

Russia and the U.S. have announced they are definitely planning several space machines. So it’s quite possible that the first space ships or satellites may encounter other interplanetary machines, manned or otherwise. Our space devices may even be closely approached by such alien machines… – Donald Keyhoe

The hardest thing is to go to sleep at night, when there are so many urgent things needing to be done. A huge gap exists between what we know is possible with today’s machines and what we have so far been able to finish. – Donald Knuth

By understanding a machine-oriented language, the programmer will tend to use a much more efficient method; it is much closer to reality. – Donald Knuth

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Work Like a Machine Quotes

The machine enslaves, the hand sets free. – Lanza del Vasto

The machine conceals the machinations. – Ursula K. Le Guin

Only a well-oiled machine runs smoothly. – Ron Kaufman

Programming in machine code is like eating with a toothpick. – Charles Petzold

I don’t even like hearing my own voice on an answering machine. – China Chow

We are not machines exploring the universe, we are people. – Chris Hadfield

Sometimes … dreams are all that separate us from the machines. – Dan Simmons. Quotes about machines!

The guitar is a much more efficient machine than a computer. More responsive. – Colin Greenwood

It’s hardware that makes a machine fast. It’s software that makes a fast machine slow. – Craig Reucassel

Machines have altered our way of life, but not our instincts. Consequently, there is maladjustment. – Bertrand Russell

A learning machine  is any device whose actions are influenced by past experience. – Nils John Nilsson. Quotes about machines!

Machines are worshiped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery. – Bertrand Russell

I have a friend of mine who does me on his answering machine, and when I call him, I answer. It’s pretty strange. – Christopher Walken

Democrats are as much a part of the war machine as Republicans. We can’t let Democrats get off the hook because they’re Democrats. – Cindy Sheehan

The machines, the modern mode of production, slowly undermined domestic production and not just for thousands but for millions of women the question arose: Where do we now find our livelihood? – Clara Zetkin

Machines are Better Than Human Quotes

No machine can wind a better sounding or tighter wind than a well trained person. – Leo Fender

Machines need to talk easily to one another in order to better serve people. – Nicholas Negroponte

How typical of a machine to think it knows better. – Vasileios Kalampakas. Quotes about machines!

When I listen to music these days, and I hear Pro Tools and drums that sound like a machine – it kinda sucks the life out of music. – Dave Grohl

The days when you needed amazing Silicon Graphics machines to run animation software are gone now. – Dave Rowntree. Quotes about machines!

An art machine is a system whose parts when put in motion act upon each other in such a way as to cause you to see things differently. – David Antin

The sun machine is coming down, and we’re gonna have a party. – David Bowie

But whatever you might say and whatever I might say, a machine which can play chess with people is one of the most marvelous wonders of our 20th century! – David Bronstein

It may be useful to remember that a peacetime political machine is built essentially on patronage. – David Galula. Quotes about machines!

The nations slithered over the brink into the boiling cauldron of war without any trace of apprehension or dismay… The nations backed their machines over the precipice that not one of them wanted war, certainly not on this scale – David Lloyd George

The more we pour the big machines, the fuel, the pesticides, the herbicides, the fertilizer and chemicals into farming, the more we knock out the mechanism that made it all work in the first place. – David R. Brower

Neither machines, nor the commodities made by them, rise in real value, but all commodities made by machines fall, and fall in proportion to their durability. – David Ricardo

The universe looks less like a big machine than a big thought. – Dean Radin. Quotes about machines!

Give a member of Congress a junket and a mimeograph machine he thinks he is secretary of state. – Dean Rusk. Quotes about machines!

Beyond that, states also had electronic voting machines that made it possible for people who are physically handicapped to vote in private… and the computerized voting machine made it very easy for, particularly, the blind. – DeForest Soaries

If you want a machine to be able to interact with people, it better not do things that are surprising to people. – Rodney Brooks

To me, the noise of a threshing machine is better music than a lot of music I hear nowadays. I took a man’s place in the threshing crew when I was only 14 years old. – Clyde Tombaugh

Quotes about Machines and Humans

In a machine age, dressmaking is one of the last refuges of the human, the personal, the inimitable. – Christian Dior

There is no difference between machine autonomy and the abdication of human responsibility. – Jaron Lanier. Quotes about machines!

I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans. And I am rooting for the machines. – Claude Shannon. Quotes about machines!

Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind. – Frank Herbert The machine unmakes the man. Now that the machine is so perfect, the engineer is nobody. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Machine makers always run the risk of becoming a total machine. – Frank Herbert Machines is on track to be on par with human intelligence in less than 15 years. –  Judy Woodruff Remember, machines don’t forgive. – Joel Salatin

Machines deprive us of two things which are certainly important ingredients of human happiness, namely, spontaneity and variety. – Bertrand Russell

When a machine begins to run without human aid, it is time to scrap it – whether it be a factory or a government. – Alexander Chase. Quotes about machines!

Some unspoken human communication is taking place on a hidden channel. I did not realize they communicated this much without words. I note that we machines are not the only species who share information silently, wreathed in code. – Daniel H. Wilson

The best programs are written so that computing machines can perform them quickly and so that human beings can understand them clearly. A programmer is ideally an essayist who works with traditional esthetic and literary forms as well as mathematical concepts, to communicate the way that an algorithm works and to convince a reader that the results will be correct. – Donald Knuth

Now, a living organism is nothing but a wonderful machine endowed with the most marvelous properties and set going by means of the most complex and delicate mechanism. – Claude Bernard. Quotes about machines!

Right from the Author

We are surrounded by machines that help us work. Our cars, our refrigerators, our washing machines, our personal computers, and much more. But as we become increasingly tech-savvy, we are reaching a point where the machines we interact with are beginning to become smarter than us. That’s why it’s important to think about what the future might hold for the technology that is already in your life. How will this technology impact the way you work?

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