The man whose life is devoted to paperwork has lost the initiative. He is dealing with things that are brought to his notice, having ceased to notice anything for himself.
C. Northcote ParkinsonRead
The chief product of an automated society is a widespread and deepening sense of boredom.
Interpretation
Automation can lead to a loss of engagement and excitement in life.
C. Northcote Parkinson's quote reflects on the consequences of an automated society, suggesting that while technology and automation can simplify tasks, they also risk creating a sense of ennui and disconnection among individuals. This commentary highlights the importance of human engagement and the potential pitfalls of over-reliance on technology, emphasizing that in the quest for efficiency, we may lose the vibrancy of life.
In practice
In a speech about the impact of technological advances on daily life.
The man whose life is devoted to paperwork has lost the initiative. He is dealing with things that are brought to his notice, having ceased to notice anything for himself.
The man who is denied the opportunity of taking decisions of importance begins to regard as important the decisions he is allowed to take.
Delay is the deadliest form of denial.
Parkinson's First Law: Work expands to fill the time available.
I took the world into me, rearranged it, and sent it back out as a question: "Do you like me?
I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between.
Why do we spend so much of our limited time on this earth focusing on all the things that our eulogies will never cover?
How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality?
This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.
Let us not complain against men because otheir rudeness, their ingratitude, their injustice, their arrogance, their love oself, their forgetfulness oothers. They are so made. Such is their nature.
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