Beware of first-hand ideas! … First-hand ideas do not really exist. They are but the physical impressions produced by love and fear, and on this gross foundation who could erect a philosophy? Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then…
Book 1909
The Machine Stops quotes
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About the book
In a far future, people live alone in underground cells where a vast global Machine supplies every need, and they meet only through screens. Vashti, a lecturer content with this life, is unsettled when her son Kuno asks to see her in person and tells her he wants to visit the surface of the earth. Written in 1909, the story anticipates video calls, online life and total dependence on technology.
6 quotes
Vashti: But I can see you! … What more do you want? Kuno: I want to see you not through the Machine … I want to speak to you not through the wearisome Machine.
No one confessed the Machine was out of hand. Year by year it was served with increased efficiency and decreased intelligence. The better a man knew his own duties upon it, the less he understood the duties of his neighbour, and in all the world there was not…
People never touched one another. The custom had become obsolete, owing to the Machine.
Man, the flower of all flesh, the noblest of all creatures visible, man who had once made god in his image, and had mirrored his strength on the constellations, beautiful naked man was dying, strangled in the garments that he had woven.
We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralysed our bodies and our…