Propose to an Englishman any principle, or any instrument, however admirable, and you will observe that the whole effort of the English mind is directed to find a difficulty, a defect, or an impossibility in it. If you speak to him of a machine for peeling a potato, he will pronounce it impossible: if you peel a potato with it before his eyes, he will declare it useless, because it will not slice a pineapple.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the skeptical and critical nature often exhibited by individuals when confronted with new ideas or inventions.
Charles Babbage highlights the tendency of some individuals, particularly the English, to focus on the flaws and limitations of new concepts or innovations rather than embracing their potential. He illustrates this with an example of a potato peeler, suggesting that even when faced with evidence of its usefulness, skeptics will still find reasons to doubt its value, deeming it inadequate for other tasks instead of recognizing its intended purpose.
In practice
During a debate on technological advancements, this quote could be used to illustrate resistance to change.
No person will deny that the highest degree of attainable accuracy is an object to be desired, and it is generally found that the last advances towards precision require a greater devotion of time, labour, and expense, than those which precede them.
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 rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
Forging differs from hoaxing, inasmuch as in the later the deceit is intended to last for a time, and then be discovered, to the ridicule of those who have credited it; whereas the forger is one who, wishing to acquire a reputation for science, records observations which he has never made.
Long intervals frequently elapse between the discovery of new principles in science and their practical application... Those intellectual qualifications, which give birth to new principles or to new methods, are of quite a different order from those which are necessary for their practical application.
Mechanical Notation ... I look upon it as one of the most important additions I have made to human knowledge. It has placed the construction of machinery in the rank of a demonstrative science. The day will arrive when no school of mechanical drawing will be thought complete without teaching it.
There are few circumstances which so strongly distinguish the philosopher, as the calmness with which he can reply to criticisms he may think undeservedly severe.
There comes a time in every man's life when he's consumed by the desire to spit on his palms, hoist the black flag and start cutting throats.
Americans tended to think of war as something that had to be done from time to time, for a particular purpose or goal. They fought not for the sake of fighting but for the sake of winning.
Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.
O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock The meat it feeds on.
My existence from day to day has become a matter of averting my eyes, of cringing. Death is the only truth left. Death is what I cannot bear to think. At every moment when I am thinking of something else, I am not thinking death, am not thinking the truth.
I'm not black, but there's a whole lot of times I wish I could say I'm not white.
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