Barry Lopez Quotes

Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.

Predatory capitalism created a complex industrial system and an advanced technology; it permitted a considerable extension of democratic practice and fostered certain liberal values, but within limits that are now being pressed and must be overcome. It is not a fit system for the mid-twentieth century.

People are spending way too much time thinking about climate change, way too little thinking about AI.

Somehow, failures in the public sector are always judged as systematic. The private sector thus exists to ride to the rescue - and their failures are only judged anomalies. A pretty nice arrangement for investors. The only people who suffer are the citizens.

By and large, our political system has betrayed its promise to each new generation of Filipinos, not a few of whom are voting with their feet, going abroad and leaving that system behind.

The most important and urgent problems of the technology of today are no longer the satisfactions of the primary needs or of archetypal wishes, but the reparation of the evils and damages by the technology of yesterday.

If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner.

I am not a Luddite. I am suspicious of technology. I am perfectly aware of its benefits, but I also try to pay attention to some of the negative effects.

Many people recognize that technology often comes with unintended and undesirable side effects.

In the United States, large corporations control some members of Congress. All this does is delay the corporation's funeral at our expense.

A world technology means either a world government or world suicide.

Triumphant science and technology are only at the threshold of man's command over sources of energy so stupendous that, if used for military purposes, they can wipe out our entire civilization.

Technology causes problems as well as solves problems. Nobody has figured out a way to ensure that, as of tomorrow, technology won't create problems. Technology simply means increased power, which is why we have the global problems we face today.

My greatest concern is that the emergence of this technology without the appropriate public attention and international controls could lead to an unstable arms race.

When you have corporate influence on our government outweighing the influence of citizens, that's terrifying. This is something we have to make a big, big noise about.

Global warming, the ongoing destruction of the planet, Third World debt, the uselessness of the railways, the takeover by the corporations, the scary George Bush person: all these things are important and should be animating me into outrage. Yet somehow they do not.

These new technologies are not yet inevitable. But if they blossom fully into being, freedom may irrevocably perish.

We cannot blindly embrace the benefits of technology.

Any mechanical invention whatsoever has been more harmful to humanity than a century of war.

It is the great glory as well as the great threat of science that everything which is in principle possible can be done if the intention to do it is sufficiently resolute.

We live in times of wonderful technology and crappy politics. The task before us now is not to let the latter destroy the former.

Man has mounted science, and is now run away with. I firmly believe that before many centuries more, science will be the master of men. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Someday science may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide, by blowing up the world.

With science, technology and globalization, man is changing the world faster than his evolution can keep up with the new dangers.

Technology will save us if it doesn't wipe us out first.

I have long since thrown in the towel on the Democratic and Republican parties because they are really a front group for the 1%, for predatory banks, fossil fuel giants, and war profiteers.