Thomas Jefferson Quotes

… increased industrial efficiency makes it possible to procure the means of livelihood with less labor

The economy of human time is the next advantage of machinery in manufactures.

Instruments, machines, looms will increasingly supplement the strength and skill of men; will augment at the same time the perfection and the precision of manufactures by lessening both the time and the labor needed to produce them

The great question, however, for the poor man is, or shortly will be, that of escape from competition with labor-saving machinery

If agrarian society must fall to the machine, at the very least, Iranians should own the machine.

The Machine is the new Messiah. Machinery is accomplishing in the world what man has failed to do by preaching, propaganda, or the written word.

Think back to the time when Agriculture was not labor efficient. We have lost all these jobs. But I don't think anyone is too sad about it.

As our farms and factories grew more efficient, they accounted for a shrinking share of our economy. And the more productive agriculture and manufacturing became, the fewer people they employed.

While China succeeded in transferring nearly 150 million people from agriculture to manufacturing, we could not do so, due to lack of skilled manpower.

Nearly every country in the world is now becoming industrialized as rapidly as it can.

There are the manufacturing multitudes of England; they must have work, and find markets for their work; if machines and the Black Country are ugly, famine would be uglier still.

It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.

If you ask an economist what's driven economic growth, it's been major advances in things that mattered - the mechanization of farming, mass manufacturing, things like that. The problem is, our society is not organized around doing that.

The more a person learns how to use the forces of nature for his own purposes, by means of perfecting the sciences and the invention and improvement of machines, the more he will produce.

If people really liked to work, we'd still be plowing the land with sticks and transporting goods on our backs.

The Industrial Revolution did not spell the end of agriculture, or even the end of food production, in the United States. It just meant that a much smaller percentage of Americans had to work on farms to feed the population.

We can go into no mechanic shop, into no manufactory of any description, upon no farm or plantation, or travel a mile on our railroads or in our steamboats, without seeing evidence of our originality and witnessing the fruits of our ingenuity and enterprise.

He who builds a factory builds a temple; he who works there worships there.

Take away my people, but leave my factories, and soon grass will grow on the factory floors. Take away my factories, but leave my people, and soon we will have a new and better factory.

The future of a Nation will be shaped by its ability to produce planes, cars, electronics ... not by how slick its financial markets can shuffle paper assets around.

The commerce of the United States is essential, if not to their existence, at least to their comfort, their growth, prosperity, and happiness. The genius, character, and habits of the people are highly commercial. Their cities have been formed and exist upon commerce. Our agriculture, fisheries, arts, and manufactures are connected with and depend upon it. In short, commerce has made this country what it is, and it can not be destroyed or neglected without involving the people in poverty and distress.

The history of economic growth is the history of people making more with less and shifting into new jobs that were unheard of in the previous generation.

Every man must admit that by means of instruments and machines the labourer can execute tasks he could not possibly perform without them; that he can perform a greater quantity of work in a given time, and that he can perform the work with greater nicety and accuracy than he could possibly do had he no instruments and machines.

The quantity of industry therefore not only increases in every country with the increase of the stock or capital which sets it in motion; but, in consequence of this increase, the division of labour becomes extended, new and more powerful implements and machines are invented, and the same quantity of labour is thus made to produce an infinitely greater quantity of commodities.

The enhancement of the profits of agriculture, the excitement of manufacturing industry, the activity of internal trade, the benefits of lucrative traffic; the interchange of valuable commodities – the commerce of fertile, remote, and wide-spread regions, and the approximation of the most distant parts of the Union, by the facility and rapidity of communication that will result from the completion of these stupendous works, will spread the blessings of plenty and opulence to an immeasurable extent. The resources of the State are fully adequate without extraneous aid; and when we consider that every portion of the nation will feel the animating spirit and vivifying influences of these great works; that they will receive the benediction of posterity and command the approbation of the civilized world; we are required to persevere by every dictate of interest, by every sentiment of honor, by every injunction of patriotism, and by every consideration which ought to influence the councils and govern the conduct of a free, high-minded, enlightened, and magnanimous people.