“The vast material displacements the machine has made in our physical e...” — Lewis Mumford Quote

“The vast material displacements the machine has made in our physical environment are perhaps in the long run less important than its spiritual contributions to our culture.”

“Let us fool ourselves no longer. At the very moment Western nations, threw off the ancient regime of absolute government, operating under a once-divine king, they were restoring this same system in a far more effective form in their technology, reintroducing coercions of a military character no less strict in the organization of a factory than in that of the new drilled, uniformed, and regimented army. During the transitional stages of the last two centuries, the ultimate tendency of this system might b e in doubt, for in many areas there were strong democratic reactions; but with the knitting together of a scientific ideology, itself liberated from theological restrictions or humanistic purposes, authoritarian technics found an instrument at hand that h as now given it absolute command of physical energies of cosmic dimensions. The inventors of nuclear bombs, space rockets, and computers are the pyramid builders of our own age: psychologically inflated by a similar myth of unqualified power, boasting through their science of their increasing omnipotence, if not omniscience, moved by obsessions and compulsions no less irrational than those of earlier absolute systems: particularly the notion that the system itself must be expanded, at whatever eventual co st to life.”

“Imagine the day when girls everywhere won't have to fight for the right to be recognized for their great work or their contributions to society.”

“There is some truth to the idea that, in the fields of science, individual contributions of great significance are possible.”

“I learned that when you're lucky enough to be surrounded by such talented people that you really become more of an orchestrator of this talent - you're just trying to harmonise everyone's contributions.”