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.
Anarcho-syndic alism took for granted that working people ought to control their own work, its conditions, the enterprises in which they work, along with communities, so they should be associated with one another in free associations, and democracy of that kind should be the foundational elements of a more general free society.
...you're waiting because you thought it would follow, you thought there would be some logic, perhaps, something to pull it all together but here we are in the weeds again, here we are in the bowels of the thing: your world doesn't make sense.
Death threatens our speech with futility because death is not just a biological event - it is a reality we fear may rob our living of any significance.
Trust and value your own divinity as well as your connection to nature. Seeing God's work everywhere will be your reward.
People struggling with life in a fallen world often want explanations when what they really need is imagination.
Religion is the life of India, religion is the language of this country, the symbol of all its movements.
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