Barry Commoner Quotes

All the technology of our production was still pre-War. They were sort of '38, '39 and the War had been stable and so we were infinitely behind whatever had been going on in the United States for instance.

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.

In the case of Apple, they did originally do production internally, but then along came unbelievably good outsourced manufacturing from companies like Foxconn. We don't have that in the rocket business. There's no Foxconn in the rocket business.

I am inclined to attach some importance to the new system of manufacturing; and venture to throw it out with the hope of its receiving a full discussion among those who are most interestedin the subject.

Good intentions can often lead to unintended consequences. It is hard to imagine a law intended for the workforce known to Henry Ford can serve the needs of a workplace shaped by the innovations of Bill Gates.

Despite all the political sound and fury, little service-sector offshoring has happened to date. But it may eventually amount to a third Industrial Revolution, and industrial revolutions have a way of transforming societies.

… post-industrial society

The way we look at manufacturing is this: the U.S.'s strategy should be to skate where the puck is going, not where it is.

We're living through the second Industrial Revolution.

When Japan was on the rise, American governors would come to inspect Toyota City and study 'just in time' manufacturing to increase efficiency; when America was at its peak in the late 1990s, the world beat a path to its venture capitalists.

It's crazy to go into manufacturing. That's not where the money is.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution does not just entail risks: it also brings solutions to humanitarian problems.

One of the good things that's happening in manufacturing in Mexico is that the old maquiladora that was relegated to just assembling things has changed in different sectors. One of these sectors is the aerospace industry and in how we attract workers that have been in technical school.

I see a big, promising future for India's manufacturing and supply chain part of our company.

Technology and production can be great benefactors of man, but they are mindless instruments, and if undirected they careen along with a momentum of their own. In our country, they pulverize everything in their path - the landscape, the natural environment.

The U.S. is becoming an industrial heartland again.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution can compromise humanity's traditional sources of meaning - work, community, family, and identity - or it can lift humanity into a new collective and moral consciousness based on a sense of shared destiny. The choice is ours.

The right focus for the U.S. is on advanced manufacturing - something that requires innovation.

To join in the industrial revolution, you needed to open a factory; in the Internet revolution, you need to open a laptop.

Over a long period of time, technological change is something that has been important in reducing manufacturing employment - absolutely and as a share of jobs in the economy.

Technological change always accelerates. It never stagnates over time. Which means we are going to face the fact that, if nothing in the States changes, we will find ourselves dependent on other countries for almost everything that can and will be manufactured in a quickly approaching future.

Globally, manufacturing jobs are on the decline, simply because productivity growth has outpaced growth in demand.

Mankind had the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, and now this third one, the information revolution.

Sitting here at the beginning of the 21st century, we're only 200 years into the industrial revolution. We don't have an enormous dataset to draw on, so whatever shaped curve we're on, we're only at the beginning of it.

In the postwar period, Americans turned away from quality as the principal goal of manufacturing and made cost the principal goal. Japanese, restructuring their companies, made exactly the opposite decision.