“
The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
...inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
Do you think it's possible for an entire nation to be insane?
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
The enemy isn't men, or women, it's bloody stupid people and no one has the right to be stupid.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
There was this about vampires : they could never look scruffy. Instead, they were... what was the word... deshabille. It meant untidy, but with bags and bags of style.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
The romantic contrast between modern industry that “destroys nature” and our ancestors who “lived in harmony with nature” is groundless. Long before the Industrial Revolution, Homo sapiens held the record among all organisms for driving the most plant and animal species to their extinctions. We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of life.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (From Animals into Gods: A Brief History of Humankind)
“
The purpose of this lectchoor is to let you know where we are. We are in the deep cack. It couldn't be worse if it was raining arseholes. Any questions?
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
This was not a fairy-tale castle and there was no such thing as a fairy-tale ending, but sometimes you could threaten to kick the handsome prince in the ham-and-eggs.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
The universe contains any amount of horrible ways to be woken up, such as the noise of the mob breaking down the front door, the scream of fire engines, or the realization that today is the Monday which on Friday night was a comfortably long way off.
A dog's wet nose is not strictly speaking the worst of the bunch, but it has its own peculiar dreadfulness which connoisseurs of the ghastly and dog owners everywhere have come to know and dread. It's like having a small piece of defrosting liver pressed lovingly against you.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
Ginger: You know what the greatest tragedy is in the whole world?... It's all the people who never find out what it is they really want to do or what it is they're really good at. It's all the sons who become blacksmiths because their fathers were blacksmiths. It's all the people who could be really fantastic flute players who grow old and die without ever seeing a musical instrument, so they become bad plowmen instead. It's all the people with talents who never even find out. Maybe they are never even born in a time when it's even possible to find out. It's all the people who never get to know what it is that they can really be. It's all the wasted chances.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
Chances are where you find them
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
Every last minute of my life has been preordained and I'm sick and tired of it.
How this feels is I'm just another task in God's daily planner: the Italian Renaissance penciled in for right after the Dark Ages.
...
The Information Age is scheduled immediately after the Industrial Revolution. Then the Postmodern Era, then the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Famine. Check. Pestilence. Check. War. Check. Death. Check. And between the big events, the earthquakes and the tidal waves, God's got me squeezed in for a cameo appearance. Then maybe in thirty years, or maybe next year, God's daily planner has me finished.
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Survivor)
“
Who shall I shoot? You choose. Now, listen very carefully: where's your coffee? You've got coffee, haven't you? C'mon, everyone's got coffee! Spill the beans!
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
You take a bunch of people who don't seem any different from you and me, but when you add them all together you get this sort of huge raving maniac with national borders and an anthem.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
It's lies. It's all lies. Some of them are just prettier than others, that's all. People see what they think is there.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
Good or bad, do it as you. Too many lies and there's no truth to go back to.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
[The pamphlet] was very patriotic. That is, it talked about killing foreigners.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
It's not lying when you do it to officers!
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
If you put butter and salt on it, it tastes like salty butter.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
How can you protect yourself by carrying a sword if you don’t know how to use it?’
Not me, sir. Other people. They see the sword and don’t attack me,’ said Maladict patiently.
Yes, but if they did, lad, you wouldn’t be any good with it,’ said the sergeant.
No, sir. I’d probably settle for just ripping their heads off, sir. That’s what I mean by protection, sir. Theirs, not mine. And I’d get hell from the League if I did that, sir.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
I don't want unnecessary violence, sergeant," said Blouse.
"Right you are, sir!" said the sergeant. "Carborundum! First man comes through that door runnin', I want him nailed to the wall!" He caught the lieutenant's eye, and added: "But not too hard!
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
This is space. It's sometimes called the final frontier.
(Except that of course you can't have a final frontier, because there'd be nothing for it to be a frontier to, but as frontiers go, it's pretty penultimate . . .)
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it's just another job.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
Anyway, why would you trust anything written down? She certainly didn't trust "Mothers of Borogravia!" and that was from the government. And if you couldn't trust the government, who could you trust?
Very nearly everyone, come to think of it...
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
There have been better attempts at marching, and they have been made by penguins.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
Since the Industrial Revolution, we’ve treated our world like it was a hotel room and we were rock stars.
”
”
Blake Crouch (Pines (Wayward Pines, #1))
“
The moments that change your life are the ones that happen suddenly, like the one where you die.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
That's the trouble about the good guys and the bad guys! They're all guys!
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
The Industrial Revolution is primarily a virus revolution, dedicated to proliferation of identical objects and persons. You are making soap, you don't give a shit who buys your soap, the more the soapier.
”
”
William S. Burroughs (The Place of Dead Roads (The Red Night Trilogy, #2))
“
And the new day was a great big fish
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
Having a kid is like an industrial revolution of the emotions. Suddenly you can mass produce worry, and guilt.
”
”
S.K. Tremayne
“
Had history been democratic in its ways, there would have been no farming and no industrial revolution. Both leaps into the future were occasioned by unbearably painful crises that made most people wish they could recoil into the past.
”
”
Yanis Varoufakis (The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy)
“
When they're laughing at you, their guard is down. When their guard is down, you can kick them in the fracas.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
Technology doesn’t have a Hippocratic oath. So many decisions that have been made by technologists in academia, industry, the military, and government since at least the Industrial Revolution have been made on the basis of “can we,” not “should we.” And the intention driving a technology’s invention rarely, if ever, limits its application and use.
”
”
Edward Snowden (Permanent Record)
“
She was a beefy young woman and, whatever piece of music she was playing, it was definitely losing.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
And if you couldn't trust the government, who could you trust? Very nearly everyone, come to think of it...
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
Polly felt questing eyes boring into her. She was embarrassed, of course. But not for the obvious reason. It was for the other one, the little lesson that life sometimes rams home with a stick: you are not the only one watching the world. Other people are people; while you watch them they watch you, and they think about you while you think about them. The world isn’t just about you.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
I had gone to graduate school because I loved literature, but in graduate school you were not supposed to study literature. You were supposed to study criticism. Some professor wrote a book 'proving' that TOM JONES was really a Marxist parable. Some other professor wrote a book 'proving' that TOM JONES was really a Christian parable. Some other professor wrote a book 'proving' that TOM JONES was really a parable of the Industrial Revolution. . . . Nobody seemed to give a shit about your reading TOM JONES as long as you could reel off the names of the various theories and who invented them. . . . My response was to sleep through as much of it as possible.
”
”
Erica Jong (Fear of Flying)
“
A month went by quickly. It didn't want to hang around.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
The word school is derived from the Greek word schole, meaning “leisure.” Yet our modern school system, born in the Industrial Revolution, has removed the leisure—and much of the pleasure—out of learning.
”
”
Greg McKeown (Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less)
“
Many people keep deploring the low level of formal education in the United states (as defined by, say, math grades). Yet these fail to realize that the new comes from here and gets imitated elsewhere. And it is not thanks to universities, which obviously claim a lot more credit than their accomplishments warrant. Like Britain in the Industrial Revolution, America's asset is, simply, risk taking and the use of optionality, this remarkable ability to engage in rational forms fo trial and error, with no comparative shame in failing again, starting again, and repeating failure.
”
”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder)
“
CARL SAGAN SAID that if you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. When he says “from scratch,” he means from
nothing. He means from a time before the world even existed. If you want to make an apple pie from nothing at all, you have to start with the Big Bang and expanding universes, neutrons, ions, atoms, black holes, suns, moons, ocean tides, the Milky Way, Earth, evolution, dinosaurs, extinction- level events, platypuses,
Homo erectus, Cro- Magnon man, etc. You have to start at the beginning. You must invent fire. You need water and fertile soil and seeds. You need cows and people to milk them and more people to churn that milk into butter. You need wheat and sugar cane and apple trees. You need chemistry and biology. For a really good apple pie, you need the arts. For an apple pie that can last for generations, you need the printing press and the Industrial Revolution and maybe even a poem.To make a thing as simple as an apple pie, you have to create the whole wide world.
”
”
Nicola Yoon (The Sun Is Also a Star)
“
Stopping a battle is much harder than starting it. Starting it only requires you to shout ‘Attack!’ but when you want to stop it, everyone is busy.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
For fifty thousand years, right up to the industrial revolution, human civilization was about one thing and one thing only: food. Every culture that existed put most of their time, energy, manpower, and resources into food. Hunting it, gathering it, farming it, ranching it, storing it, distributing it…it was all about food.
”
”
Andy Weir (Project Hail Mary)
“
He put more effort into avoiding work than most people put into hard labor.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
Trolls have 5,400 words for rocks and one for vegetation. "Oograah" means everything from moss to giant redwoods. The way trolls see it, if you can't eat it, it's not worth naming it.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
Zippers are primal and modern at the very same time. On the one hand, your zipper is primitive and reptilian, on the other mechanical and slick. A zipper is where the Industrial Revolution meets the Cobra Cult, don't you think? Ahh. Little alligators of ecstasy, that's what zippers are. Sexy, too. Now your button, a button is prim and persnickety. There's somethin' Victorian about a row o' buttons. But a zipper, why a zipper is the very snake at the gate of Eden, waitin' to escort a true believer into the Garden. Faith, I should be sewin' more zippers into me garments, for I have many erogenous zones that require speedy access. Mmm, old zipper creeper, hanging head down like the carcass of a lizard; the phantom viper that we shun in daytime and communicate with at night.
”
”
Tom Robbins
“
Map-making had never been a precise art on the Discworld. People tended to start off with good intentions and then get so carried away with the spouting whales, monsters, waves and other twiddly bits of cartographic furniture that the often forgot to put the boring mountains and rivers in at all.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
A woman always has half an onion left over, no matter what the size of the onion, the dish or the woman
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
Perhaps that's why men did it. You didn't do it to save duchesses, or countries. You killed the enemy to stop him killing your mates, that they in turn might save you ...
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
The history of the industrial revolution
shows how that power passed from the king and the
aristocracy to the bourgeoisie. Universal suffrage
and universal schooling reinforced this tendency, and
at last even the bourgeoisie stood in fear of the com-
mon people. For the masses promised to become
king.
”
”
Edward L. Bernays
“
If the abnormal goes on long enough it becomes the normal.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
Believe it. That was the way. Never stop believing. Fool the eye, fool the brain.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
He gave Gaspode a long, slow stare, which was like challenging a centipede to an arse-kicking contest.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
Democracy is supposed to be ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’. Capitalism is ‘of the capitalist, for the capitalist’. Period.
”
”
Jerry Ash (Hellraiser—Mother Jones: An Historical Novel)
“
1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in “advanced” countries.
”
”
Theodore J. Kaczynski (Industrial Society and Its Future)
“
Industrial man—a sentient reciprocating engine having a fluctuating output, coupled to an iron wheel revolving with uniform velocity. And then we wonder why this should be the golden age of revolution and mental derangement.
”
”
Aldous Huxley (Time Must Have a Stop)
“
There are a lot of things that aren’t your fault. Or mine, either. Not the fault of prophecies, or curses, or DNA, or absurdity. Not the fault of Structuralism or the Third Industrial Revolution. We all die and disappear, but that’s because the mechanism of the world itself is built on destruction and loss. Our lives are just shadows of that guiding principle. Say the wind blows. It can be a strong, violent wind or a gentle breeze. But eventually every kind of wind dies out and disappears. Wind doesn’t have form. It’s just a movement of air.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)
“
It's all trickery. They keep you down and when they piss off some other country, you have to fight for them! It's only your country when they want you to get killed!
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
What was it they said about the gods? They wouldn’t exist if there weren’t people to believe in them? And that applied to everything. Reality was what went on inside people’s heads.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
And a woman by herself is missing a man, while a man by himself is his own master.
Trousers. That's the secret. Trousers and a pair of socks. I never dreamed it was like this. Put on trousers and the world changes. We walk different. We act different. I see these girls and I think: Idiot's Get yourself some trousers!
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
Ankh-Morpork is a godless city--'
'I thought it had more than three hundred places of worship?' said Maladict.
Strappi stared at him in rage that was incoherent until he managed to touch bottom again. 'Ankh-Morpork is a godawful city', he recovered.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
Happier than a terrier in a barrel full of rats
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
Since the Industrial Revolution, we’ve treated our world like it was a hotel room and we were rock stars. But we aren’t rock stars. In the scheme of evolutionary forces, we are a weak, fragile species. Our genome is corruptible, and we so abused this planet that we ultimately corrupted that precious DNA blueprint that makes us human.
”
”
Blake Crouch (Pines (Wayward Pines, #1))
“
They weren't looking at him as if he was their only hope. They were looking at him as if he was their Certainty.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
According to the history books, the decisive battle that ended the Ankh-Morpork Civil War was fought between two handfuls of bone-weary men in a swamp early one misty morning and, although one side claimed victory, ended with a practical score of Humans 0, ravens 1,000, which is the case with most battles.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
Reality is not digital, an on-off state, but analog. Something gradual. In other words, reality is a quality that things possess in the same way that they possess, say, weight. Some people are more real than others, for example. It has been estimated that there are only about five hundred real people on any given planet, which is why they keep unexpectedly running into one another all the time.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
The obvious differences apart, Karl Marx was no more a reliable prophet than was the Reverend Jim Jones. Karl Marx was a genius, an uncannily resourceful manipulator of world history who shoved everything he knew, thought, and devised into a Ouija board from whose movements he decocted universal laws. He had his following, during the late phases of the Industrial Revolution. But he was discredited by historical experience longer ago than the Wizard of Oz: and still, great grown people sit around, declare themselves to be Marxists, and make excuses for Gulag and Afghanistan.
”
”
William F. Buckley Jr.
“
Those industry-designed latest models, which hover in the air, are nothing compared to the story these GVs have.
”
”
Misba (The High Auction (Wisdom Revolution, #1))
“
The techno-medical model of maternity care, unlike the midwifery model, is comparatively new on the world scene, having existed for barely two centuries. This male-derived framework for care is a product of the industrial revolution. As anthropologist Robbie Davis-Floyd has described in detail, underlying the technocratic mode of care of our own time is an assumption that the human body is a machine and that the female body in particular is a machine full of shortcomings and defects. Pregnancy and labor are seen as illnesses, which, in order not to be harmful to mother or baby, must be treated with drugs and medical equipment. Within the techno-medical model of birth, some medical intervention is considered necessary for every birth, and birth is safe only in retrospect.
”
”
Ina May Gaskin (Ina May's Guide to Childbirth)
“
Well, the lion is a big ol’ coward, mostly. If you want trouble, you want to tangle with the lioness. They’re killers, and they hunt together. It’s the same everywhere. If you want big grief, look to the ladies.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
But the sun itself, however beneficent, generally, was less kind to Coketown than hard frost, and rarely looked intently into any of its closer regions without engendering more death than life. So does the eye of Heaven itself become an evil eye, when incapable or sordid hands are interposed between it and the thing it looks upon to bless.
”
”
Charles Dickens (Hard Times)
“
In societies where incomes and educational levels are low, it is often far easier to get supporters to the polls based on a promise of an individual benefit rather than a broad programmatic agenda.
”
”
Francis Fukuyama (Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy)
“
at least nine-tenths of all the original reality ever created lies outside the multiverse, and since the multiverse by definition includes absolutely everything that is anything, this puts a bit of a strain on things.
Outside the boundaries of the universes lie the raw realities, the could-have-beens, the might-bes, the never-weres, the wild ideas, all being created and uncreated chaotically like elements in fermenting supernovas.
Just occasionally where the walls of the worlds have worn a bit thin, they can leak in.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
Having to haul around extra poundage was far too much effort, so he saw to it that he never put it on and he kept himself in trim because doing things with decent muscles was far less effort than trying to achieve things with bags of flab.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
We have come to discover what we suspect is a new political mindset emerging among a younger generation of political leaders socialized on Internet communications. Their politics are less about right versus left and more about centralized and authoritarian versus distributed and collaborative.
”
”
Jeremy Rifkin (The The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World)
“
Regular crises perpetuate the past by reinvigorating cycles which started long ago. In contrast, (capital-C) Crises are the past's death knell. They function like laboratories in which the future is incubated. They have given us agriculture and the industrial revolution, technology and the labour contract, killer germs and antibiotics. Once they strike, the past ceases to be a reliable predictor of the future and a brave new world is born.
”
”
Yanis Varoufakis (The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy)
“
Real magic is the hand around the bandsaw, the thrown spark in the powder keg, the dimension-warp linking you straight into the heart of a star, the flaming sword that burns all the way down to the pommel. Sooner juggle torches in a tar pit than mess with real magic. Sooner lie down in front of a thousand elephants.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
In the nineteenth century the Industrial Revolution created new conditions and problems that none of the existing social, economic, and political models could cope with. Feudalism, monarchism, and traditional religions were not adapted to managing industrial metropolises, millions of uprooted workers, or the constantly changing nature of the modern economy. Consequently, humankind had to develop completely new models—liberal democracies, communist dictatorships, and fascist regimes—and it took more than a century of terrible wars and revolutions to experiment with these models, separate the wheat from the chaff, and implement the best solutions. Child labor in Dickensian coal mines, the First World War, and the Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932–33 constituted just a small part of the tuition fees humankind had to pay.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
“
We will endeavor to halt the Industrial Revolution before it is too late, to regulate population at a reasonable point, to eventually replace quantitative money with qualitative money, to decentralize, to conserve resources. The Industrial Revolution is primarily a virus revolution, dedicated to controlled proliferation of identical objects and persons. You are making soap, you don't give a shit who buys your soap, the more the soapier. And you don't give a shit who makes it, who works in your factories. Just so they make soap.
”
”
William S. Burroughs
“
She is standing just behind you. Just behind your right shoulder."
In the silence of the woods, Polly turned.
"I can't see her," she said.
"I am happy for you," said Wazzer, handing her the empty mug.
"But I didn't see anything," said Polly.
"No," said Wazzer. "But you turned around...
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
Young women today feel vulnerable to judgment; if a harsh sentence is passed (or even suspected or projected), it is not her reputation that suffers so much as the stability of her moral universe. They did not have long to explore the sexual revolution and make it their own. Before the old chains had grown cold, while young women were still rubbing the circulation back into their ankles and taking tentative steps forward, the beauty industries levied a heavy toll on further investigations, and beauty pornography offered them designer bondage.
”
”
Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth)
“
If they look as though they're worried, we'll move in.'
'And do what exactly?' said Polly.
'Threaten to shoot them,' said Maladict firmly.
'And if they don't believe us?'
'Then we'll threaten to shoot them in a much louder voice,' said Maladict. 'Happy? And I hope to hell they've got some coffee!
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
“
Can you swim?" said Victor. One of the cavern's rotting pillars crashed down behind them. From the pit itself came a terrible wailing.
"Not very well," said Ginger.
"Me neither," he said. The commotion behind them was getting worse.
"Still," he said, taking her hand. "We could look on this as a great opportunity to improve really quickly.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
Most people living in rich, stable developed countries have no idea how Denmark itself got to be Denmark—something that is true for many Danes as well. The struggle to create modern political institutions was so long and so painful that people living in industrialized countries now suffer from a historical amnesia regarding how their societies came to that point in the first place.
”
”
Francis Fukuyama (The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution)
“
Ivanov- "Up to now , all revolutions have been made by moralizing diletantes. They were always in good faith and perished because of their dilettantism. We for the first time are consequent..."
"Yes," said Rubashov. "So consequent, that in the interests of a just distribution of land we deliberately let die of starvation about five million farmers and their families in one year. So consequent were we in the liberation of human beings from the shackles of industrial exploitation that we sent about ten million people to do forced labour in the Artic regions and the jungles of the East, under conditions similar to those of antique galley slaves. So consequent that, to settle a difference of opinion, we know only one argument: death, whether it is a matter of submarines, manure, or the Party line to be followed in Indo-China. ...
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Arthur Koestler (Darkness at Noon)
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The Necrotelicomnicon was written by a Klatchian necromancer known to the world as Achmed the Mad, although he preferred to be called Achmed the I Just Get These Headaches. It is said that the book was written in one day after Achmed drank too much of the strange thick Klatchian coffee which doesn't just sober you up, but takes you through sobriety and out the other side, so that you glimpse the real universe beyond the clouds of warm self-delusion that sapient life usually generates around itself to stop it turning into a nutcake. Little is known about his life prior to this event, because the page headed 'About The Author' spontaneously combusted shortly after his death. However, a section headed 'Other Books By the Same Author' indicates that his previous published work was Achmed the I Just Get These Headaches's Book of Humorous Cat Stories, which might explain a lot.
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Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
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True, hundreds of millions may nevertheless go on believing in Islam, Christianity or Hinduism. But numbers alone don’t count for much in history. History is often shaped by small groups of forward-looking innovators rather than by the backward-looking masses. Ten thousand years ago most people were hunter-gatherers and only a few pioneers in the Middle East were farmers. Yet the future belonged to the farmers. In 1850 more than 90 per cent of humans were peasants, and in the small villages along the Ganges, the Nile and the Yangtze nobody knew anything about steam engines, railroads or telegraph lines. Yet the fate of those peasants had already been sealed in Manchester and Birmingham by the handful of engineers, politicians and financiers who spearheaded the Industrial Revolution. Steam engines, railroads and telegraphs transformed the production of food, textiles, vehicles and weapons, giving industrial powers a decisive edge over traditional agricultural societies.
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Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
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No one knows any longer whether the reintroduction of the bear in Pyrenees, kolkhozes, aerosols, the Green Revolution, the anti-smallpox vaccine, Star Wars, the Muslim religion, partridge hunting, the French Revolution, service industries, labour unions, cold fusion, Bolshevism, relativity, Slovak nationalism, commercial sailboats, and so on, are outmoded, up to date, futuristic, atemporal, nonexistent, or permanent.
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Bruno Latour (We Have Never Been Modern)
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Similar ecological disasters occurred on almost every one of the thousands of islands that pepper the Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, Arctic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. Archaeologists have discovered on even the tiniest islands evidence of the existence of birds, insects and snails that lived there for countless generations, only to vanish when the first human farmers arrived. None but a few extremely remote islands escaped man’s notice until the modern age, and these islands kept their fauna intact. The Galapagos Islands, to give one famous example, remained uninhabited by humans until the nineteenth century, thus preserving their unique menagerie, including their giant tortoises, which, like the ancient diprotodons, show no fear of humans. The First Wave Extinction, which accompanied the spread of the foragers, was followed by the Second Wave Extinction, which accompanied the spread of the farmers, and gives us an important perspective on the Third Wave Extinction, which industrial activity is causing today. Don’t believe tree-huggers who claim that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature. Long before the Industrial Revolution, Homo sapiens held the record among all organisms for driving the most plant and animal species to their extinctions. We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of biology. Perhaps if more people were aware of the First Wave and Second Wave extinctions, they’d be less nonchalant about the Third Wave they are part of. If we knew how many species we’ve already eradicated, we might be more motivated to protect those that still survive. This is especially relevant to the large animals of the oceans.
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Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
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War is becoming an anachronism; if we have battled in every part of the continent it was because two opposing social orders were facing each other, the one which dates from 1789, and the old regime. They could not exist together; the younger devoured the other. I know very well, that, in the final reckoning, it was war that overthrew me, me the representative of the French Revolution, and the instrument of its principles. But no matter! The battle was lost for civilization, and civilization will inevitably take its revenge. There are two systems, the past and the future. The present is only a painful transition. Which must triumph? The future, will it not? Yes indeed, the future! That is, intelligence, industry, and peace. The past was brute force, privilege, and ignorance. Each of our victories was a triumph for the ideas of the Revolution. Victories will be won, one of these days, without cannon, and without bayonets.
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Napoléon Bonaparte
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Christianity, Islam and Judaism, the dominant faiths in our culture, were devised to guide people living in very different circumstances to our own – put simply, deserts. How do the teachings of Christ or Abraham or Muhammad help us in the modern, post-industrial, secular world? Not to say these stories are totally obsolete; there’s some terrific advice in all of them. Primarily, though, they have become tools for oppression, segregation and conflict. The aspects of these ideologies that testify against oppression, segregation and conflict, which would seem to be the most vital bits, are consistently ignored.
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Russell Brand (Revolution)
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Now observe that in all the propaganda of the ecologists—amidst all their appeals to nature and pleas for “harmony with nature”—there is no discussion of man’s needs and the requirements of his survival. Man is treated as if he were an unnatural phenomenon. Man cannot survive in the kind of state of nature that the ecologists envision—i.e., on the level of sea urchins or polar bears....
In order to survive, man has to discover and produce everything he needs, which means that he has to alter his background and adapt it to his needs. Nature has not equipped him for adapting himself to his background in the manner of animals. From the most primitive cultures to the most advanced civilizations, man has had to manufacture things; his well-being depends on his success at production. The lowest human tribe cannot survive without that alleged source of pollution: fire. It is not merely symbolic that fire was the property of the gods which Prometheus brought to man. The ecologists are the new vultures swarming to extinguish that fire.
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Ayn Rand (The Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution)
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There’s a saying that all roads lead to Ankh-Morpork, greatest of Discworld cities.
At least, there’s a saying that there’s a saying that all roads lead to Ankh-Morpork.
And it’s wrong. All roads lead away from Ankh-Morpork, but sometimes people just walk along them the wrong way.
Poets long ago gave up trying to describe the city. Now the more cunning ones try to excuse it. They say, well, maybe it is smelly, maybe it is overcrowded, maybe it is a bit like Hell would be if they shut the fires off and stabled a herd of incontinent cows there for a year, but you must admit that it is full of sheer, vibrant, dynamic life. And this is true, even though it is poets that are saying it. But people who aren't poets say, so what? Mattresses tend to be full of life too, and no one writes odes to them. Citizens hate living there and, if they have to move away on business or adventure or, more usually, until some statute of limitations runs out, can’t wait to get back so they can enjoy hating living there some more. They put stickers on the backs of their carts saying "Anhk-Morpork—Loathe It or Leave It.
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Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
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Until now, I've been writing about "now" as if it were literally an instant of time, but of course human faculties are not infinitely precise. It is simplistic to suppose that physical events and mental events march along exactly in step, with the stream of "actual moments" in the outside world and the stream of conscious awareness of them perfectly synchronized. The cinema industry depends on the phenomenon that what seems to us a movie is really a succession of still pictures, running at twenty-five [sic] frames per second. We don't notice the joins. Evidently the "now" of our conscious awareness stretches over at least 1/25 of a second.
In fact, psychologists are convinced it can last a lot longer than that. Take he familiar "tick-tock" of the clock. Well, the clock doesn't go "tick-tock" at all; it goes "tick-tick," every tick producing the same sound. It's just that our consciousness runs two successive ticks into a singe "tick-tock" experience—but only if the duration between ticks is less than about three seconds. A really bug pendulum clock just goes "tock . . . tock . . . tock," whereas a bedside clock chatters away: "ticktockticktock..." Two to three seconds seems to be the duration over which our minds integrate sense data into a unitary experience, a fact reflected in the structure of human music and poetry.
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Paul C.W. Davies (About Time: Einstein's Unfinished Revolution)
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The next phase of the Digital Revolution will bring even more new methods of marrying technology with the creative industries, such as media, fashion, music, entertainment, education, literature, and the arts. Much of the first round of innovation involved pouring old wine—books, newspapers, opinion pieces, journals, songs, television shows, movies—into new digital bottles. But new platforms, services, and social networks are increasingly enabling fresh opportunities for individual imagination and collaborative creativity. Role-playing games and interactive plays are merging with collaborative forms of storytelling and augmented realities. This interplay between technology and the arts will eventually result in completely new forms of expression and formats of media. This innovation will come from people who are able to link beauty to engineering, humanity to technology, and poetry to processors. In other words, it will come from the spiritual heirs of Ada Lovelace, creators who can flourish where the arts intersect with the sciences and who have a rebellious sense of wonder that opens them to the beauty of both.
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Walter Isaacson (The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution)
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Meanwhile, Mme Mao and her cohorts were renewing their efforts to prevent the country from working. In industry, their slogan was: "To stop production is revolution itself." In agriculture, in which they now began to meddle seriously: "We would rather have socialist weeds than capitalist crops." Acquiring foreign technology became "sniffing after foreigners' farts and calling them sweet." In education: "We want illiterate working people, not educated spiritual aristocrats." They called for schoolchildren to rebel against their teachers again; in January 1974, classroom windows, tables, and chairs in schools in Peking were smashed, as in 1966. Mme Mao claimed this was like "the revolutionary action of English workers destroying machines in the eighteenth century." All this demagoguery' had one purpose: to create trouble for Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiao-ping and generate chaos. It was only in persecuting people and in destruction that Mme Mao and the other luminaries of the Cultural Revolution had a chance to "shine." In construction they had no place.
Zhou and Deng had been making tentative efforts to open the country up, so Mme Mao launched a fresh attack on foreign culture. In early 1974 there was a big media campaign denouncing the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni for a film he had made about China, although no one in China had seen the film, and few had even heard of it or of Antonioni. This xenophobia was extended to Beethoven after a visit by the Philadelphia Orchestra.
In the two years since the fall of Lin Biao, my mood had changed from hope to despair and fury. The only source of comfort was that there was a fight going on at all, and that the lunacy was not reigning supreme, as it had in the earlier years of the Cultural Revolution. During this period, Mao was not giving his full backing to either side.
He hated the efforts of Zhou and Deng to reverse the Cultural Revolution, but he knew that his wife and her acolytes could not make the country work.
Mao let Zhou carry on with the administration of the country, but set his wife upon Zhou, particularly in a new campaign to 'criticize Confucius." The slogans ostensibly denounced Lin Biao, but were really aimed at Zhou, who, it was widely held, epitomized the virtues advocated by the ancient sage. Even though Zhou had been unwaveringly loyal, Mao still could not leave him alone. Not even now, when Zhou was fatally ill with advanced cancer of the bladder.
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Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China)
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At this point, I must describe an important study carried out by Clare W. Graves of Union College, Schenectady, N.Y. on deterioration of work standards. Professor Graves starts from the Maslow-McGregor assumption that work standards deteriorate when people react against workcontrol systems with boredom, inertia, cynicism... A fourteen-year study led to the conclusion that, for practical purposes, we may divide people up into seven groups, seven personality levels, ranging from totally selfpreoccupied and selfish to what Nietzsche called ‘a selfrolling wheel’-a thoroughly self-determined person, absorbed in an objective task. This important study might be regarded as an expansion of Shotover’s remark that our interest in the world is an overflow of our interest in ourselves—and that therefore nobody can be genuinely ‘objective’ until they have fully satiated the subjective cravings. What is interesting—and surprising—is that it should not only be possible to distinguish seven clear personality-ypes, but that these can be recognised by any competent industrial psychologist. When Professor Graves’s theories were applied in a large manufacturing organisation—and people were slotted into their proper ‘levels’—the result was a 17% increase in production and an 87% drop in grumbles.
The seven levels are labelled as follows:
(1) Autistic
(2) Animistic
(3) Awakening and fright
(4) Aggressive power seeking
(5) Sociocentric
(6) Aggressive individualistic
(7) Pacifist individualistic.
The first level can be easily understood: people belonging to it are almost babylike, perhaps psychologically run-down and discouraged; there is very little to be done with these people. The animistic level would more probably be encountered in backward countries: primitive, superstitious, preoccupied with totems and taboos, and again poor industrial material. Man at the third level is altogether more wide-awake and objective, but finds the complexity of the real world frightening; the best work is to be got out of him by giving him rules to obey and a sense of hierarchical security. Such people are firm believers in staying in the class in which they were born. They prefer an autocracy. The majority of Russian peasants under the Tsars probably belonged to this level. And a good example of level four would probably be the revolutionaries who threw bombs at the Tsars and preached destruction. In industry, they are likely to be trouble makers, aggressive, angry, and not necessarily intelligent. Management needs a high level of tact to get the best out of these. Man at level five has achieved a degree of security—psychological and economic—and he becomes seriously preoccupied with making society run smoothly. He is the sort of person who joins rotary clubs and enjoys group activities. As a worker, he is inferior to levels three and four, but the best is to be got out of him by making him part of a group striving for a common purpose.
Level six is a self-confident individualist who likes to do a job his own way, and does it well. Interfered with by authoritarian management, he is hopeless. He needs to be told the goal, and left to work out the best way to achieve it; obstructed, he becomes mulish.
Level seven is much like level six, but without the mulishness; he is pacifistic, and does his best when left to himself. Faced with authoritarian management, he either retreats into himself, or goes on his own way while trying to present a passable front to the management.
Professor Graves describes the method of applying this theory in a large plant where there was a certain amount of unrest. The basic idea was to make sure that each man was placed under the type of supervisor appropriate to his level. A certain amount of transferring brought about the desired result, mentioned above—increased production, immense decrease in grievances, and far less workers leaving the plant (7% as against 21% before the change).
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Colin Wilson (New Pathways in Psychology: Maslow & the Post-Freudian Revolution)