Enigma Machines

Famous quotes containing the words enigma and/or machines:

    His moving impulse is no flabby yearning to teach, to expound, to make simple; it is that “obscure inner necessity” of which Conrad tells us, the irresistible creative passion of a genuine artist, standing spell-bound before the impenetrable enigma that is life, enamoured by the strange beauty that plays over its sordidness, challenged to a wondering and half-terrified sort of representation of what passes understanding.
    —H.L. (Henry Lewis)

    The machines that are first invented to perform any particular movement are always the most complex, and succeeding artists generally discover that, with fewer wheels, with fewer principles of motion, than had originally been employed, the same effects may be more easily produced. The first systems, in the same manner, are always the most complex.
    Adam Smith (1723–1790)