A tool is usually more simple than a machine; it is generally used with the hand, whilst a machine is frequently moved by animal or steam power..

The fatigue produced on the muscles of the human frame does not altogether depend on the actual force employed in each effort, but partly on the freq….

I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam..

It can happen to but few philosophers, and but at distant intervals, to snatch a science, like Dalton, from the chaos of indefinite combination, and ….

I have no desire to write my own biography, as long as I have strength and means to do better work..

[In response to Alfred Tennyson's poem "Vision of Sin," which included the line "Every moment dies a man, every moment one is born."] If this were tr….

At each increase of knowledge, as well as on the contrivance of every new tool, human labour becomes abridged..

The accumulation of skill and science which has been directed to diminish the difficulty of producing manufactured goods, has not been beneficial to ….

What is there in a name? It is merely an empty basket, until you put something into it..

For one person who is blessed with the power of invention, many will always be found who have the capacity of applying principles..

The economy of human time is the next advantage of machinery in manufactures..

The first steps in the path of discovery, and the first approximate measures, are those which add most to the existing knowledge of mankind..

The errors which arise from the absence of facts are far more numerous and more durable than those which result from unsound reasoning respecting tru….

Trimming consists of clipping off little bits here and there from those observations which differ most in excess from the mean, and in sticking them ….

If we look at the fact, we shall find that the great inventions of the age are not, with us at least, always produced in universities..

The whole of the developments and operations of analysis are now capable of being executed by machinery ... As soon as an Analytical Engine exists, i….

The true value of the Christian religion rests, not upon speculative views of the Creator, which must necessarily be different in each individual, ac….

Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all..

In England, the profession of the law is that which seems to hold out the strongest attraction to talent, from the circumstance, that in it ability, ….

The difference between a tool and a machine is not capable of very precise distinction; nor is it necessary, in a popular explanation of those terms,….

On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able ri….