Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the complex relationship humans have with machines, highlighting their beauty and utility as well as the potential for oppression.
Bertrand Russell's quote delves into the duality of machines in human society. He presents them as objects of admiration for their aesthetics and the power they provide, yet simultaneously warns against their potential to enslave individuals by removing autonomy and instilling dependency. This encapsulates a broader discussion about technology and its impact on human freedom and social structures.
In practice
In a discussion about the role of technology in modern society, this quote could emphasize the dual nature of machines.
St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.
At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.
Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
Reason is a supple nymph, and slippery as a fish by nature. She had as leave give her kiss to an absurdity any day, as to syllogistic truth. The absurdity may turn out truer.
I imagine the earth when I am no more: Women's dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley. Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born, Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.
If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.
I've always believed in the adage that the secret of eternal youth is arrested development.
Beautiful objects are wrought by study through effort, but ugly things are reaped automatically without toil.
If gold rusts, what then can iron do?
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