Famous quotes containing the words general, purpose and/or machine:
“Any general statement is like a cheque drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“Along the journey we commonly forget its goal. Almost every vocation is chosen and entered upon as a means to a purpose but is ultimately continued as a final purpose in itself. Forgetting our objectives is the most frequent stupidity in which we indulge ourselves.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“But a man must keep an eye on his servants, if he would not have them rule him. Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world. But it is found that the machine unmans the user. What he gains in making cloth, he loses in general power.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)