Russell Kirk Quotes

Industrial forces set in motion by steam and electricity have materially changed the structure of our civilization.

In the 18th century, James Hargreaves invented the Spinning Jenny, and Richard Arkwright pioneered the water-propelled spinning frame which led to the mass production of cotton. This was truly revolutionary. The cotton manufacturers created a whole new class of people - the urban proletariat. The structure of society itself would never be the same.

The Industrial Revolution was another of those extraordinary jumps forward in the story of civilization.

It's the Industrial Revolution and the growth of urban concentrations that led to a sense of anonymity.

The United States as we know it today is largely the result of mechanical inventions, and in particular of agricultural machinery and the railroad.

Every time a new technology comes along, we feel we're about to break through to a place where we will not be able to recover. The advent of broadcast radio confused people. It delighted people, of course, but it also changed the world.

The industrial revolution turned time into a commodity.

The old order of the country gave way to the new order of the city. Rural morality was replaced by urban morality, rural voices by urban voices, rural votes by urban votes.

The essence of the Industrial Revolution was the substitution of competition for the medieval regulations which had previously controlled the production and distribution of wealth.

The Second Wave Society is industrial and based on mass production, mass distribution, mass consumption, mass education, mass media, mass recreation, mass entertainment, and weapons of mass destruction. You combine those things with standardization, centralization, concentration, and synchronization, and you wind up with a style of organization we call bureaucracy.

When the Internet really first started to hit, people felt this would be the death blow: after suburbs and long commutes and television and the death of the family dinner, this would be the last straw that would totally break society.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century the industrial-financial revolution began.

For many societies, the journey to modernity has been painful and costly.

The industrial revolution has tended to produce everywhere great urban masses that seem to be increasingly careless of ethical standards.

Tribal life comes automatically to an end when a primitive people begins to live in a town or a city, for sooner or later a tribal organization is found to be incompatible with life in a city.

Whenever culture has gone through a radical change, as ours has - from industrial age to information age - there are people who will deny that things have changed; they resist it and refuse to change.

There has always been at each decisive period of the world’s history some voice, some note, that represented … prevailing power …. And now finally, there was heard in the streets the murmur of the newest and most perfect of forces, the automobile, rushing along at the rate of 25 miles and hour.

The introduction of so powerful an agent as steam will make a great change in the situation of man.

Industrial Revolution

With his Model T, Henry Ford affected the world more than any other man in 1500 years.

My favorite zone is from 1890 -1915, that zone that spans the overlap of the so-called Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. People had such a boundless sense of optimism; They felt they could do anything they wanted to do, and they went out and tried to do it.

The Industrial Revolution has two phases: one material, the other social; one concerning the making of things, the other concerning the making of men.

I appreciate the change associated with people's growth, but I don't like the changes in our lives. I came to Mumbai in 1945, so imagine my acceptance of the massive changes around. I have witnessed every kind of revolution.

Even if there have been setbacks during these past years, China is changing. China's society is opening.

In the US in the 1900's 60 % of people were employed on the farms. Today it's less than 1%. If you told people back then that this would happen they wouldn't have believed it. If you told them we would have therapy, massages and spas that played important parts in our lives they would've have believed us.