Henry David Thoreau Quotes

The greatest task before civilization at present is to make machines what they ought to be, the slaves, instead of the masters of men.

The problem in the 19th century with information was that we lived in a culture of information scarcity, and so humanity addressed that problem beginning with photography and telegraphy and the - in the 1840s. We tried to solve the problem of overcoming the limitations of space, time, and form.

So is man's heart. The desire to perform a work which will endure, which will survive him, is the origin of his superiority over all other living creatures here below. It is this which has established his dominion, and this it is which justifies it, over all the world.

It is the triumph of civilization that at last communities have obtained such a mastery over natural laws that they drive and control them. The winds, the water, electricity, all aliens that in their wild form were dangerous, are now controlled by human will, and are made useful servants.

The veneration, wherewith Men are imbued for what they call Nature, has been a discouraging impediment to the Empire of Man over the inferior Creatures of God. For many have not only look'd upon it, as an impossible thing to compass, but as something impious to attempt.

And thereby make ourselves, as it were, the lords and masters of nature.

The 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man.

The will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens to slip from human control

Man is born to conquer nature and not to follow it.

Human potential is the same for all. If you have will power, then you can change anything.

Every day I turned a 'you can't' into a 'you can.'

For one to grasp, whatever be his object, sov'reign power ... is an act of perilous presumption.

I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they do no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power...power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

If I have the courage to acknowledge my limits and embrace them, I can experience enormous freedom. If I lack this courage, I will be imprisoned by them.

I'm truly sorry man's dominion has broken Nature's social union.

The dictator, in all his pride, is held in the grip of his party machine. He can go forward; he cannot go back. He must blood his hounds and show them sport, or else, like Actaeon of old, be devoured by them. All-strong without, he is all-weak within.

To aspire to be superhuman is a most discreditable admission that you lack the guts, the wit, the moderating judgment to be successfully and consummately human.

Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.

Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power.

Man must conquer nature.

In 1975, ... [speaking with Shiing Shen Chern], I told him I had finally learned ... the beauty of fiber-bundle theory and the profound Chern-Weil theorem. I said I found it amazing that gauge fields are exactly connections on fiber bundles, which the mathematicians developed without reference to the physical world. I added, "this is both thrilling and puzzling, since you mathematicians dreamed up these concepts out of nowhere." He immediately protested: "No, no. These concepts were not dreamed up. They were natural and real."

I mean I love movement. I mean the energy that comes from the way I move. We get energy from how we move. I mean the control I get from knowing everything about how my body feels and how it is working.

Hitler was a teetotalitarian.

I'm a person who has, to a certain extent, redefined where I should be. I started off in Brooklyn and Queens and I wasn't supposed to come to Manhattan.

I feel like you have to constantly keep proving yourself, and you have to constantly keep getting out there and showing them you're more than just that one song on the radio that's just playing. And that's what I had to do the first time around; I had to keep going out there and keep performing live.