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.

I'm very pro-science and pro-technology; I believe that these have been key drivers of progress in the world in the last centuries.

America was probably Europe's equal scientifically by the end of World War I and certainly surpassed it after the chaos of World War II.

Those who admire modern civilization usually identify it with the steam engine and the electric telegraph.

All recognized famous inventors had capable predecessors and successors and made their improvements at a time when society was capable of using their product.

I see in industrialization the central problem of building in our time. If we succeed in carrying out this industrialization, the social, economic, technical, and also artistic problems will be readily solved.

When you look at the actual data on technological innovation, one thing you see is that what I call the 'low-hanging fruit' has been exhausted. So radio, flush toilets, electricity, and automobiles - a lot of very basic inventions - have spread to almost all households.

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

People use technology only to mean digital technology. Technology is actually everything we make.

Technology is rooted in the past. It dominates the present and tends into the future. It is a real historical movement - one of the great movements which shape and represent their epoch.

I don't think love for technology itself breeds change.

Just after World War II, this country led the world in science by every way you could measure it, yet the number of scientists was a tiny proportion of what it is now.

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

The city of Tehran is a very modern metropolis, and there's an emphasis in the Islamic republic on science and advancement and technology.

The march of invention has clothed mankind with powers of which a century ago the boldest imagination could not have dreamt.

Well into the 20th century, scholars viewed economic advances as resulting from commercial innovations enabled by the discoveries of scientists - discoveries that come from outside the economy and out of the blue.

I'm fascinated by the period that goes from the Industrial Revolution to right after World War II. There's something about that period that's epic and tragic.

For most of human civilization, the pace of innovation has been so slow that a generation might pass before a discovery would influence your life, culture or the conduct of nations.

Electricity is an example of a general purpose technology, like the steam engine before it. General purpose technologies drive most economic growth, because they unleash cascades of complementary innovations, like lightbulbs and, yes, factory redesign.

Government isn't that good at rapid advancement of technology. It tends to be better at funding basic research. To have things take off, you've got to have commercial companies do it.

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.

We know that defence work results in more than great defence hardware - it can drive innovation and advances in all areas of our life.

In consequence, science is more important than ever for industrial technology.

Warfare evolves. It changes as a result of technology. It changes as the culture changes.

Luddism is no longer with us, but today we seem to be overtaken by its opposite, the inevitability of technological change coupled with the blind belief in capitalism's ability to provide us with all we need.